NOTICE Trump and his merry band of white nationalists failed to see this small UK event...
More Than 130 Imams Are Refusing To Perform Funeral Prayers For The London And Manchester Attackers https://www.buzzfeed.com/aishagani/i...rm=.psqDORvZmV …
Originally Posted by OUTLAW 09
Richard N. Haass
@RichardHaass
This lack of formality & discipline in which the formal NSC process is effectively ignored is a recipe for disaster
Question becomes: what happens if the decision is on use military force and the formal NSC process is ignored again?
So much for that whole "it goes without saying" story. It doesn't & key members of Trump's team knew it
It also evicerates a senior admin official who told us with straight face on AF1 that no one in admin had ever heard of Article 5 concerns.
NOTICE Trump and his merry band of white nationalists failed to see this small UK event...
More Than 130 Imams Are Refusing To Perform Funeral Prayers For The London And Manchester Attackers https://www.buzzfeed.com/aishagani/i...rm=.psqDORvZmV …
David Rank, no.2 @USEmbassyBJ, has resigned, sources say. He couldn't back Trump on climate. Rank had 27yr career including @USEmbassyKabul
ICIJ
✔ @ICIJorg Previously undisclosed #PanamaPapers docs shed new light on Trump associates' deals with Russia-owned VEB bank https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/04/b...=top-news&_r=0 …
WHEN will this President truely and completely stop lying....????
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
.@foxandfriends Dems are taking forever to approve my people, including Ambassadors. They are nothing but OBSTRUCTIONISTS! Want approvals.
WELL then nomiate ambassadors for the process...Trump has only nomiated tqwo and they were approved.....
SECOND problem that Trump does not tweet about is those he has initially nominated did not get Government Office of Ethnics clearances....
Trump tweets a quote that he claims the London Mayor stated WHICH turned out to be FALSE and then re attacks this mayor again....
WHY is that..because the London Mayor corrected him and he hates to be corrected by a Muslim it seems....
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
Pathetic excuse by London Mayor Sadiq Khan who had to think fast on his "no reason to be alarmed" statement. MSM is working hard to sell it!
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump · 4. Juni
At least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there is "no reason to be alarmed!"
Putin's toolkit harkens to the 70s/Brezhnev period:
https://republic.ru/posts/83640?code...72994c1c9a3505
Excellent article although in Russian...
Watching McMaster: The first rule of Realism is you don’t talk about Realism
By Thomas E. Ricks
June 5, 2017
http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/06/05/...about-realism/
Lt. Col. (Ret.) Paul Yingling was on the staff of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment when it was commanded in Iraq by then-Col. H.R. McMaster, who is now the national security adviser. Yingling subsequently became the deputy commander of the regimentTom,
As you may recall, we first met when you were embedded with the 3d ACR in Tal Afar, Iraq in 2005. Sectarian violence had plunged the town into a Hobbesian state of nature; for civilians and combatants alike, life was solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
You were working on a book to describe this reality to the American public, and wondered aloud about a fitting epigram. I suggested Pericles’ admonition to the Athenians in Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War: “Your empire is now like a tyranny: It may have been wrong to take it; it is certainly dangerous to let it go.”
Thus began our decade-long conversation about the moral ambiguity of power, narrated largely by Thucydides. Sophisticated readers of History of the Peloponnesian War recognize the complexity of the text. The early stages of the war offer a primer on Realpolitik, but the narrative later becomes a morality play on the temptations of power. Initially, Athens fought its rival Sparta to preserve its empire and consolidate its hegemony over the Hellenic world. The Athenian leader Pericles counseled a policy of prudence: To preserve Athens’ navy, avoid expanding the empire during the course of the war and do nothing to risk the city itself. The policy was largely successful, producing the Peace of Nicias on terms largely favorable to Athens.
The Realpolitik of Pericles began to deteriorate after his death, setting the stage for the morality play that ended with the destruction of Athens. Cunning men of low character jockeyed for power, more interested in personal glory and wealth than the security of Athens. In Mytilene, Cleon nearly convinced his countrymen to commit genocide. In Melos, the Athenian ambassadors sang a hideous, cartoonish paean to brute force: “The strong do what they can, and the weak accept what they must.” Finally and most tragically, Alcibiades convinced his countrymen to wage a war of aggression in Sicily, promising quick conquest and plentiful treasure. This last blunder was fatal to the Athenians: the whole Hellenic world turned against them, ultimately setting the stage for Persia to aid Sparta in defeating Athens.
The destruction was as much moral as political. Thucydides describes an Athens in which “[w]ords had to change their ordinary meaning and to take that which was now given them. Reckless audacity came to be considered the courage of a loyal ally; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice.”
Mark Twain is said to have cautioned us that history may not repeat itself but it often rhymes. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the American Pericles; his guiding principle was neither ambition nor morality, but prudence. He affirmed liberal principles in the Atlantic Charter in hopes of moving the American public to the British war effort. He back slapped “Uncle Joe” Stalin, making a deal with one monster to defeat another. Above all else, he preserved the security of the American people and the institutions that kept his country unified, free, and perhaps most importantly, amenable to improvement. FDR’s immediate successors built on this legacy, creating the institutions that cloaked American political and economic advantage in the language of mutual benefit: the United Nations, NATO, and a liberal international system of free trade. Realism is the prudential calculation of probabilities, cloaking the mailed fist of power in the velvet glove of morality. FDR, Harry Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower were quintessentially realists.
The degeneration of American prudence began in the latter stages of the Cold War, and accelerated precipitously after the 9/11 attacks. Cunning men of low character jockeyed for power, consumed by ambition and hubris. John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard Nixon fought a reckless and unwinnable war, while their advisors were derelict in their duty to speak truth to power. George W. Bush launched a war of aggression in Iraq, promising quick conquest and plentiful treasure in a unipolar world transformed by American power. Most recently, Donald Trump’s principal advisors annunciated his “America First” foreign policy with a hideous, cartoonish paean to brute force:
The president embarked on his first foreign trip with a clear-eyed outlook that the world is not a “global community” but an arena where nations, nongovernmental actors and businesses engage and compete for advantage. We bring to this forum unmatched military, political, economic, cultural and moral strength. Rather than deny this elemental nature of international affairs, we embrace it.
As in Athens, the destruction is as much moral as political. Words have ceased to convey their ordinary meanings; alternative facts, fake news and pseudo-science are sufficient substitutes for the genuine articles.
Unsophisticated observers mistakenly believe that Realism is the glorification of brute force, and that Trump’s foreign policy is a manifestation of realist principles. Careful readers of Thucydides know that the’ glorification of brute force makes more enemies than friends. America’s enemies will recognize that they need not fear an administration prone to empty bluster abroad and scandal at home. Of greater concern, America’s friends may calculate they cannot trust an administration that discards the work of decades so casually.
In Tal Afar, I witnessed a sophisticated application of the principles of Realpolitik. Then-Colonel H.R. McMaster made a prudential series of calculations regarding the application of diplomacy and force necessary to break the back of the insurgency that gripped the region. In public, he couched American objectives in the language of justice and morality. He affirmed the legitimacy of the Iraqi government, acknowledged the previous errors in the American war effort and pledged to support those committed to creating a peaceful and prosperous Iraq. In private, he revealed the mailed fist of American power, presenting tribal sheikhs with an unambiguous ultimatum: “The time for honorable resistance is over. Don’t make me kill your young men to convince you that I’m serious.”
In Washington, President Trump is rapidly dismantling the system of mutual obligations that produced the longest period of great power peace in the nation-state era. He publicly glorifies brute force, unaware or uninterested in the dangers of destroying the liberal international system that FDR and his successors created. Thucydides’ lessons were meant to last forever, but cannot be easily distilled into 140 characters. Nevertheless, the least informed president in American history might benefit from adopting the Durden Doctrine: The first rule of Realism is you don’t talk about Realism.
Regards,
Paul
David,
Yes: "really".
Apparently, Outlaw is privy to secret economic intelligence indicating that Ukraine would be the world's leading agricultural exporter and tiger of Europe, were it not for Russian aggression...
Because of Outlaw's displeasure at PiS governance in Poland, he suggested that the Ukrainian economy was outpacing Poland's. See my responses below:
- http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...3&postcount=26
- http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...5&postcount=28
Basically, the moral of the story is that any opposition to Brussels' and Berlin's writ portends state failure, Great Britain included.
Unfortunately, Outlaw continues to do a great disservice to the causes he allegedly supports: humanitarian intervention by the West, containment of Russia, liberal-socialist domestic policies, anti-carbon policies, etc. The reliance upon anecdotal or plain fabricated evidence, the use of multiple opinion pieces to create a sense of evidentiary consensus, and the parroting of MSM opinions only hardens the opposition.
You will recall years of this particular SWC poster railing against the MSM, and trusting only a handful of sources and social media. Suddenly, the NYT, WaPo, The Guardian (which had touted Assad's election "victory"), CNN, et al can do no wrong...
NBC News PR
✔ @NBCNewsPR JUST IN: Congress Will Ask if #Kushner Was Seeking a Russian Bailout for 666 Fifth Ave
http://nbcnews.to/2qTEJhL #mustread
Azor...since you are the definer of everything correct...come to Berlin and I will set you up with face to face discussions with both the German and Ukrainian Ministers responsible for Agriculture and get you an interview with Monsanto as well....as to their business goals/investments in Ukraine....and I do have some pull still in the German FM that could get you an interview as well on the economic goals being envisioned for Ukraine within EU....
Wish you truely would contribute something other than just words and comments in a cut and paste fashion which is quite easy to do actually and requires little effort after driving CrowBat off SWC.......
Can get you as well other interviews with say UAF reps as well....since they pendle in and out of the military facilities near Berlin..
I rely on what is in fact provable regardless of who prints it....be it MSM...be it a leftist Journal and yes even the right sometimes actually provides data capable of being fact tested..........
BTW you did state if I remember correctly the Trump Russian thingy was a fake as was the Steele Dossier and where are we now ???? Watch the coming two weeks weeks and get back to me on whether the Steele Dossier was correct or not....
Now go back to my initial comments when Brexit passed and then see what I predicted would be the outcome of leaving......we are getting close to those predictions are we not....
And I recall mentioning there would be a Constitutional decision that would state Parliment had to be involved...which did occur if I recall as well...
So contribute not rant....
Might apply to some of the comments here....
Imagine fake tweets from fake people, with fake likes to make you think an opinion in your circle is mainstream ...
http://bit.ly/2pORice
Azor...is this not what CrowBat was in fact politley trying to tell you????
Azor........BTW I have been pointing out his somewhat minor point about social media especially why Twitter seems to be so Russian slanted lately...BTW this figure i also mentioned in the Ukrianin thread in 2014.....
And this might be the reason twitter is doing nothing about the Russian Trump bot army: $800 Million from Russia!
Twitter confirms 'significant' round of funding led by Russian investment company
Twitter has confirmed it has received “significant funding” from Yuri Milner’s DST Global.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/n...t-company.html
“If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I?”
Last edited by OUTLAW 09; 06-05-2017 at 06:44 PM.
Azor......care to comment on this and explain just where the Trump FP answer is for this development???
H Hassan حسن حسن
✔ @hxhassan Read my recent piece situating the crisis in what these countries say Qatar's refusal to deliver on its promises
http://www.thenational.ae/opinion/co...-for-islamists …
Angelo Codevilla: "Punishing The Real Russia Crime: Leaking"
Angelo Codevilla: "Punishing The Real Russia Crime: Leaking" (https://amgreatness.com/2017/06/04/p...crime-leaking/)
Selected Excerpts:
The appointment of a special counsel, as well as the Congressional proceedings to uncover and punish such associates of Donald Trump as may have colluded with the Russian government with regard to the 2016 campaign, are a combination of partisan and Intelligence-bureaucracy warfare. No one has mentioned any activity of anyone in that campaign that might qualify as a violation of any criminal statute. Moreover, these legal and pseudo-legal proceedings abstract from the patently obvious felonies that U.S intelligence officials have committed each and every time they have informed reporters of the Washington Post and New York Times about the targets, functions, and results of U.S communications intelligence.
Herewith a summary of how the parody grew to its current dimensions, and a straight-line projection of where it leads unless the distinction between law and politics is re-established.
A minor defensive maneuver at the time, the “Russia interference in the elections” narrative grew into the Democratic Party’s main explanation for the massive electoral rejection at all levels it ended up suffering on November 8, 2016.
By spring 2016, Obama administration appointees to the U.S. intelligence agencies, having raised those agencies’ traditional alignment with the Democratic Party to unprecedented levels, were acting as adjuncts to the Clinton campaign. Candidate Clinton was suffering from the public’s perception that her use of a private email server for government business had compromised classified information. When Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails hacked by the international hacker Guccifer and published by Wikileaks showed that the party was siding with Clinton against Bernie Sanders, the alienation of Sanders supporters further diminished Democratic prospects in November.
To divert attention from Clinton’s assorted e-mail problems, the DNC hired its associated IT firm, Crowdstike, which concluded―without giving any evidence―that “the Russians” had been hacking Democrats, and that they had done so to help the Republicans. The intelligence agencies concurred. Numerous intelligence officials have claimed to know who supplied the-mails to Wikileaks. No one has given evidence on the record. A minor defensive maneuver at the time, the “Russia interference in the elections” narrative grew into the Democratic Party’s main explanation for the massive electoral rejection at all levels it ended up suffering on November 8, 2016.
Former CIA Director John O. Brennan (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
When Donald Trump became the Republican nominee, much of the U.S government, intelligence agencies included, conducted “opposition research” on him. This included tacitly validating a scurrilous report by a British source of Donald Trump with Russian prostitutes. At first, it targeted Paul Manafort, whom Trump had chosen to manage his campaign at the Republican convention, and Carter Page, a minor foreign policy advisor. The FBI and the Justice Department obtained a warrant from the secret court established under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to intercept their electronic communications. Both men had worked, legally, with Russian entities.
Note well: Here is a U.S, official, excusing the “wiretapping” of his Party’s political opponents on the basis of the fact that Russians (like many foreigners) use their dealings with Americans to influence them and his assumption that said Russians had succeeded to some culpable extent. Under questioning, however, Brennan was forced to recant those assumptions: “I don’t know whether or not such collusion… I don’t know.” And: “we see contacts and interactions between Russian officials and U.S. persons all the time.” Nevertheless Brennan tried to make a public policy case for surveilling these political opponents: “It is when it’s in the context that there is something else going on—and so we knew, at the time, that the Russians were involved in this effort to try to interfere in our election.”
Brennan was not asked for evidence of any such attempt, nor was he forced to confront the fact that Hillary Clinton had received millions of dollars from foreign entities, including Russian ones. Nevertheless, he was forced to say that the wiretapping showed zero evidence of collusion between the Trump associates and the Russians with regard to anything, never mind criminal activity.
Simple facts: Already well before the election, intelligence officials―possibly including Mr. Brennan―had used the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to do legally (though not a bit more properly) the kind of snooping into the political opposition that the 1972-74 Watergate burglars had done. But the legality of what they did ended the instant that they went to The New York Times and Washington Post with “Phone records and intercepted calls.” At that point, they became criminals.
After the election, as the Democratic Party scrambled to protect itself from the opposition’s victory and perhaps to reverse it, bureaucratic self-interest led the intelligence agencies, especially CIA, to become the spearhead of that effort. On December 15 U.S. intelligence officials told NBC News they had “a high level of confidence” that Russian President Vladimir Putin personally directed how messages and other documents hacked from Democrats were used to influence the presidential election.
There was never doubt about the CIA’s bureaucratic motivation. Early on, Trump had found Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn (USA-ret) to be his favorite spokesman on foreign policy and let it be known that Flynn would be his National Security Adviser. As the Defense Intelligence Agency’s director, Flynn had fought bitter bureaucratic battles with the CIA and with the Obama administration.
There followed a public report by the agencies of their “high confidence”―but zero evidence―that Putin preferred Trump. Predictably, already in mid-December The Hill reported that, according to a poll: More than half of Americans bothered by Russian interference in election. No surprise then that on January 19 The New York Times reported that American intelligence officials “are examining intercepted communications and financial transactions as part of a broad investigation into possible links between Russian officials and associates of President-elect Donald J. Trump.”
Even less surprising, then, that the agencies “wiretapped” Flynn to see what they could “get on him.”
Since Obama, the Democratic Party, and CIA had given dicta but zero evidence concerning “Russian meddling,” the advice that Flynn gave and Trump endorsed made the Obama administration and its Russophobia look silly.
That is when the Obama administration’s/CIA’s rage, the media’s complicity, and the “attentive public’s” gullibility therewith, went into high gear to turn ordinary, garden-variety actions in international affairs―if conducted by opponents―into pseudo crimes.
In real life, foreign affairs means dealing with foreigners. Every day in every way, just about everybody who is involved in international relations practically or academically―never mind persons who are about to undertake official responsibilities―communicates with foreign officials to the maximum extent possible testing possible new approaches to policy. Hence, as Michael Flynn was dealing with the Russian ambassador, he was doing his job, and doing it just right. So did then Senator Jeff Sessions and every other Senator who meets with representatives of foreign governments. Nevertheless, a March 1, 2017 Times article depicts the “finding” by Obama administration officials that people close to Trump had many contacts with Russians as something of a smoking gun of culpability.
This sort of thing should be dismissed by comparing it to the old joke about the college dean who was accused of lascivious behavior for having insisted on his female undergraduates showing him their theses before letting them graduate. Except that the U.S. intelligence officials who have purveyed the Trump/Russia stories have done so by citing U.S. communications intelligence. That is not a joke. It is a crime.
There is irrefutable evidence that Maher said it. Not so for Sessions. Nice try though.
TWO serious points that this article fails to state.....
1. IF one seriously looks at the so called leaking ..not a single classified bit of SIGINT and or HUMINT has been leaked to the press or social media.....
BUT on the other side of the coin we have a President leaking CODE WORD highly classifed Information to the Russian FM
BUT we have a Nunes of the HSIC actually leaking classified information which now has him under an ethnic investigation and his TS/SCI clearance downgraded to S....
BUT we have Burr from the Senat IC also leaking classified materials as well and is under investigation for that.....
AND MSM has actually confirmed that a large number of the so called leaks are in fact coming from the WH Staff....for whatever political intigue games they are playing....
2. THEN we have the so called "unmasking" debate started by Nunes as a distraction from the Russian invesitgation of the WH and Trump....with Nunes pointing his finger at the Obama NSC Susan Rice...THEN we suddenly learn Nunes had far more "unmasking requests than did Rice" BUT we do not hear anything about Nunes...ALL we hear is Rice....
WHAT is at the heart of the so called "leaking" is the constant drip of information about what is and or is not being investigated around Trump and his family and WH....
THAT is what this whole debate around "leaking is really all about"....end of story...
LASTLY this is really a Russian propaganda attempt to distract from the FBI Russian Investigation....
Russian propagnada works on the 6Ds Principle.....
Distract...Distort...Deflect....Dismay ALL designed to create Doubt and Distrust......
RERERAD the entire article and then tell me which of these 6Ds fits the article....
Last edited by davidbfpo; 06-05-2017 at 08:56 PM. Reason: Brevity
JUST A SIDE NOTE
When reading such blogsites as this one...amgreatness.com...ASK the simple question does this blogsite use the Russian propaganda 6Ds Principle in writing their articles and WHO is the target audience and WHAT is the "narrative" being used for that target group of readers.....
THEN take this single comment and ask yourself HAS that person being quoted EVER truely stated what is being claimed by the blogsite????
REMEMBER the Russian Propganda 6Ds Principle
Distract...Distort...Deflect....Dismiss ALL designed to create Doubt and Distrust....
To all readers of SWJ this reference to what Feinstein stated was 400% denied by Feinstein THUS it is a blatant attempt to create a "narrative of truth"...There is no question that he told President Trump that on the basis of all evidence, Trump was not suspected of wrongdoing in his campaign’s relations with the Russian government, and Senator Feinstein, a militant Trump opponent, confirms that Comey had said this to her and the Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, Charles Grassley. The same person who rushed before the cameras to convict but excuse from charges Mrs. Clinton, could express privately the innocence of Mr. Trump, but could give no hint of it publicly, even though he knew perfectly well that the continuing confected cloud of the Russian collusion allegation seriously impeded the ability of the administration to goven.
Hghly recomment urgently the reading of this long and documented article posted today....REPOSTED BELOW as it fits nicely into the Azor posted article....
Azor........BTW you need to seriously go back and reread the Horowity article link below....this blogsite is in fact tied to 21 other similar blogsite types all designed to give the look and free of a "real News site" but drives a hardcore alt right ie white nationalist slant....or "narrative".....
How a ‘shadow’ universe of charities joined with right wing political warriors to fuel Trump’s rise
http://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/...cid=spartandhp
Azor...BTW..this is where age/experience comes into play......the David Horowitz named as the flaming right winger in this article........WELL I met him years ago when he was a "flaming Marxist" ranting against the US governmwent and evil capitalism and supporting the Black Panthers...and sat in some of his seminars when he claimed himself to be a "flaming member of the US Communist Party"......
Amazing just how money a lot of money corrupts one's own morals, values and political beliefs...
Suggest you read some of this most popular books from the 60s and then tell me where he "sold out"...he went to bed red one night and then woke up black...come on if you believe that then I do have a bridge in the desert to sell you......
Last edited by davidbfpo; 06-05-2017 at 08:59 PM. Reason: Brevity
https://www.pastemagazine.com/articl...google-to.html
How the Trump-Russia Data Machine Games Google to Fool Americans
By Roger Sollenberger June 1, 2017
A year ago I was part of a digital marketing team at a tech company. We were maybe the fifth largest company in our particular industry, which was drones. But we knew how to game Google, and our site was maxed out. We did our research and geared the content for the major keywords that we knew people used most frequently when they were shopping for drones or researching drones or looking for drone video. We knew our audience: their buying habits, their interests, ages, geography, etc., and soon our Google results were up there with a company that was literally an order of magnitude bigger than we were. A few months later, we were beating them at Google.
Our sales reflected this nearly immediately, but perhaps more importantly, we were perceived as being much bigger and more influential than we actually were. It was unfair and fair at the same time. It’s just how that game is played, everywhere.
But then the giants wised up, poured a ton of people and money into it and squashed us.
Thing is, it doesn’t take all that much to do what we did. Ask any digital marketer. You just need a little experience and a whole lot of time and money. I’m not going to get into the weeds of SEO (search engine optimization). But I am going to say something that sounds completely insane, and warn you that we’re in the middle of something we’ve never experienced in America: a full-on psychological war. And Google, of all places, is a main battlefield.
I’m going to show you one specific weapon in this war that’s being used against you and me and the United States right now: Google. There are other information weapons, such as bots and fake news sites, but other stories have those pretty well covered. But before we get started, though, two things to keep in mind:
First, most of us don’t even know we’re in this war yet. You don’t know when you’ve been wounded, when you’ve been killed. And that’s the whole point: You’re not supposed to.
Second, the attacks in this war aren’t aimed at your enemies. You attack your own side.
Independence Is Division
First: Why this is important. Why this is a war.
Google, whether you’re aware of it or not, is a total slaughterhouse. Trump’s data team (he’s reportedly set up a “war room” to combat the Russia story) has weaponized information, and for about a year now has been slaying American brains: Trump supporters’ brains. It started with the election, then died down, but now it’s coming back, vengeful and desperate.
As a result, we’re at a pivotal point not just in the life of our democracy, but in how we think, read, and make choices. Selective information is being presented to us in a way that encourages selective reading and offers psychological and social rewards for, to put it bluntly, being stupid and submissive and spreading stupid to submit others.
This is, of course, about the truth, and about the cognitive and emotional vulnerabilities of Americans. This is nothing new for propagandists. What’s different now is that this propaganda is being gamed by professionals in a massive, orchestrated data campaign at a volume, pace, and consistency that not only muddies the truth, but completely eclipses the truth. Destroys the very notion of truth.
I can describe it in no other terms but a war.
The truth about the truth is that we believe because we want to, because our ability to think independently is a point of pride for Americans. The people behind the curtain are telling us the same story we tell ourselves about ourselves. But this is also a vulnerability: Independence is in its purist form a kind of division. If you exploit it the right way, you can turn a democracy against itself. If I think about this for too long I grow terrified and want to take everyone’s computer away. But it might be too late.
Beyond the Bots: Trump’s Twitter Toupee
The past few days, we’ve seen some good reporting about the surge of Trump bots on social media. (Bots are automated, non-human accounts.) And though he didn’t, as some people have claimed, net five million new Twitter followers in three days (though he did gain three million in May), nearly half of his followers, a full 49 percent, aren’t real people.
That’s right: Trump is being followed by 15 million robots.
The Washington Post just ran a pretty cowardly piece about Trump’s bot following. They titled it “Something Fishy Is Going on with Trump’s Twitter Account,” but didn’t say why this fishiness mattered in the first place. Who really cares if his followers are fake? So what if he wears a Twitter toupee? (A Twoupee, if you will.) We’re used to that from Trump.
Here’s where WaPo wouldn’t, for some reason, go: those bots aren’t just digital codpieces. They’re attack vectors for weaponized information. What does that mean?
Misinfotainment
When we think about the Russian attacks during the election, most of us probably think of the DNC hacks, Podesta, and the steady drips from WikiLeaks of that stolen information. If you hate Hillary Clinton, I’m sure that at some point in the past nine months you’ve said something like, “Well, who cares how that information got out there, it’s the truth!”
I won’t argue. Instead, I’d like to point out that’s not the whole story. According not just to me and FAKE NEWS! reports, but to the declassified U.S. intelligence report on Russian subversion in the 2016 election, the attacks included weaponizing false information (what “fake news” really is: stuff that’s entirely made up; pure fiction) and creating real-seeming sites to host this fake news. So no, the whole hacking effort was not just publishing “the truth” about Clinton. Much of it was publishing fake news. Or, perhaps more dangerously, misleading news.
This brings us to Google today. A couple weeks ago I saw an insane person on my Facebook feed screaming about how Obama had leaked classified information about the Bin Laden raid that got people killed. What the ####? I’d never heard anything about this, and the raid was six years ago, and this guy was a total right-wing crackpot, which is the trifecta for guaranteeing at least fifteen full minutes of bat#### conspiracy theory misinfotainment. So I duly Googled “obama classified information bin laden.” If you do that right now, here’s what you get.
WHAAAAAT?! Obama’s mouth killed people! Media is libturd hypocrites!
Let’s ignore the criminal level of stupidity for a minute. Look instead at the dates on those articles. May 16 and 17 of this year. This year. The Bin Laden raid, again, was six ####ing years ago. What’s happening here? Why are all these different white nationalist news sites suddenly writing about this together? Why did they start doing it on May 16? Why do those articles even exist?
Well, on May 15, you might remember, The Washington Post broke this little gem: President Trump shared top secret intel with the Russian Foreign Minister and Russian Ambassador. In the Oval Office. In front of Russian state media.
Whoops-a-daisy!
The right-wing bull#### factory lurched to life. These outlets launched a broad “what about?” attack, a coordinated attack, on Obama and the left. That bull#### story about Obama’s “dangerous” classified “leak” suddenly broke throughout the right-wing media sphere. Some of these articles are even cut-and-paste jobs. There’s no effort here, just content. Tons of content, made quickly, made together, all spewing the same lies, but optimized.
And when I googled the search term the night of May 31, as I’m writing this, it’s even worse. The Washington Post, which had a page two hit on May 29, is now at the bottom of page four.
Continue.....
See? You’d either miss this caveat altogether, or you’d forget about it or write it off as meaningless or some kind of error. It’s so small, after all. This is completely forgivable: It’s a human vulnerability. I exhibit it. Everyone does. We want to be right. We trust our brains. We believe in ourselves, in our capacity to execute sound, independent judgment. But this is the very thing that’s being strategically exploited on a truly massive scale. This is a scheme to generate an overwhelming amount of misinformation, not just to combat a more nuanced truth, but to marginalize the truth, to weaken it, to BURY it underneath your own misplaced convictions about yourself.
We’re being flattered into stupidity. Here’s how it works.
How The SEOsage Is Made
First: Create content that subtly masks the truth.
Second: Shape that content into something people will share.
Third: Make it identical, and make a ton of it.
Fourth: Flood the internet with that content.
Fifth: Flood the internet with that content.
Six: Flood the ####ing internet with that content.
Continued......
Food for Thought
"To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle."
-- George Orwell
To Outlaw 09
When did I say that? I’m here to learn, question and challenge.
Your reporting on the conflicts in Ukraine and Syria – during the blackout period when these crises were inconvenient for Western governments and their friends in the media to dwell upon – was outstanding.
Unfortunately, for some months now you have put your political preferences above all else, and now that your opinions are in vogue, all seems to be forgiven as far as the media is concerned. Indifference to the bleeding sores in Donbas and Syria? Water under the bridge.
I may take you up on that offer, but not this year, I’m afraid.
Of course, there can be no question that Monsanto’s interest in Ukraine’s corrupt, opaque and inefficient agricultural sector is anything but altruistic.
Regardless, there is a great deal of agricultural competition out there. Food prices have been declining globally since 2011, however, Ukraine should do well in this area in the coming years. Will Ukraine overtake competitors such as Australia and Canada, or European ones such as France and Germany? That remains to be seen.
On the contrary, I post reports and articles of interest, in addition to my own views. Should this thread be merely a concordance for center-left and left-wing criticism of Trump?
I hardly drove CrowBat off SWC. He was unable to refute my arguments or to successfully defend his own, especially as he had to venture far beyond his area of expertise to do so. I assume that he ceased posting here in order to focus on his writing or analysis of RuAF/SyAAF activity in Syria.
Why would I be interested in the official line from Kiev?
Which is why RawStory articles are increasingly finding their way into this thread? If you are going to post from RawStory, then you should also post from Breitbart as well.
If you are so interested in facts, then why did you blatantly lie about Ukraine’s economy vis-à-vis Poland and then Britain?
As I recall, the “Steele Dossier” had nothing new to add to the “Russian Connection” file other than the piss-‘n’-prostitutes tape. It was a regurgitation of allegations already made public, with the Kompromat ensconced in the center.
I will be watching…
The UK does not have a constitution. PwC is rather bullish on the UK, predicting comparable GDP growth in 2017-2018 to Germany despite Brexit, followed by 2% annual GDP growth: https://www.pwc.co.uk/services/econo...c-outlook.html
The UK should do quite well outside of the EU, however, British policymakers can always make a mess of it, as they have in the past.
Curious. I am naturally suspicious of “mainstream” opinions, as most people tend to be ignorant and irrational about most things most of the time.
How so?
I thought that was Sean Spicer’s job. When I get paid to do it, I’ll do it.
The $110 billion arms deal to Saudi Arabia is fake news
http://brook.gs/2rqAEAq
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