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The Russian Propaganda Campaign
- Thread starter HomerThompson
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Funny enough, I might be the right of that argument. Worker co-ops, and shorter work days to artificially manufacture jobs. It's really just a kick the can down the road ploy though. Eventually we end up at 1 hour work days, and what do you do then?
My thought is that it buys us time to develop new economic and political ideology.
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I'm kind of dumbfounded by this post.
Hillary voted for Iraq and she was the leading voice in the US's involvement in Libya: the ouster of two prominent autocrats who had acquiesced to US soft diplomacy only to be blindsided. That would be sufficient basis alone, but I (and most should be) am of persuasion that the Russian government wasn't "anti-Hillary," but instead pro-discord. And Trump was clearly the most divisive and dysfunctional candidate.
Also, Sanders and Stein were clearly, almost ludicrously clearly, less imposing to Russian interests, as both wanted to slash the military budget, withdraw or lessen involvement in Syria, and adopt a more cooperative stance on Iran.
I don't necessary sign on with @SBJJ's play by play with all of the dealings re Libya/Syria being expressly agree to (I think, as with most things, it's more gray), but I think his general perspective is pretty well-positioned.
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So oil, and ME(edit) or Africa whatever. I can accept that explanation.
I guess the discord idea does hold some weight as well, as a RNC backed trump isn't exactly an ally. The RNC does its best to make Clinton look like a dove.
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Lol at this. I guess you should go bomb Russia for shit posting on the internet, or go enforce your stupid ass little laws and lock them up. Fuck you talking about man?
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Did I suggest military response?
Also it's not my "stupid ass little laws." It's the United States government's.
I have no idea why you think it's sensible to substitute every argument on this subject with "LOL bomb Russia!" That's the definition of a straw man. And it makes it seem like you don't actually have an understand of, or position on, the subject.
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I can't divulge too much info, but it will involve something stained, something blue, an old jar of pickles and something eew.
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What Is the Internet Research Agency?
- BY KRISHNADEV CALAMURTHE ATLANTICREAD BIO
The origin of the Russian “troll farm” that allegedly targeted America’s 2016 presidential election.
The Internet Research Agency is a Russian troll farm in St. Petersburg—in essence a Kremlin-backed enterprise staffed with hundreds of people whose main job is to sow disinformation on the internet. The organization, which serves as a propaganda arm for Russian President Vladimir Putin, is at the heart of the indictments handed down Friday by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
The indictment alleges that IRA officials began targeting the United States in 2014 and continued until the November 2016 election that saw the election of President Trump. (The indictment does not allege collusion between these individuals and the Trump campaign.) The IRA, which is based in St. Petersburg, is funded by Evgeny Prigozhin, a Russian oligarch who is close to the Kremlin. He was among 13 people indicted Friday.
The troll farm’s operations began inside Russia after massive anti-government protests against Putin in 2011. In those demonstrations, the Russian opposition successfully harnessed social media to help drive protesters out into the streets. As Adrian Chen wrote in The New York Times Magazine in 2015, Vyascheslav Volodi, the architect of Putin’s domestic policy, came into office in 2012. His job was to rein in the internet. (He was not indicted Friday.)
The battle was conducted on multiple fronts. Laws were passed requiring bloggers to register with the state. A blacklist allowed the government to censor websites without a court order. Internet platforms like Yandex were subjected to political pressure, while others, like VKontakte, were brought under the control of Kremlin allies. Putin gave ideological cover to the crackdown by calling the entire Internet a “C.I.A. project,” one that Russia needed to be protected from. Restrictions online were paired with a new wave of digital propaganda. The government consulted with the same public relations firms that worked with major corporate brands on social-media strategy. It began paying fashion and fitness bloggers to place pro-Kremlin material among innocuous posts about shoes and diets…
As Putin and his allies took greater control of the Russian internet, opposition voices began getting drowned out online. Russian media reports say the IRA was functioning by the summer of 2013. By the following year, Friday’s indictment points out, the IRAwas targeting the U.S.
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Chen detailed elaborate hoaxes crafted by the IRA to feed into American fears: On September 11, 2014, for instance, reports circulated online of a toxic-chemical leak in Louisiana. The hoax involved fake social-media accounts, fake videos, and fake news websites mimicking those of real news organizations like CNN, all used to create a veneer of authenticity. Similar hoaxes were designed to spread panic around the killing of unarmed black people by the police and the Ebola virus.
Such acts were taken straight from the Soviet-era playbook on disinformation, designed to sow doubt in the public mind about what’s real and what isn’t. It became what Chen called the “biggest trolling operation in history” whose “target is nothing less than the utility of the Internet as a democratic space.” The project was then directed at the U.S. presidential election, as American intelligence agencies and experts have repeatedly said since November 2016. (They have not said whether the Russian interference actually changed the outcome.) As Julia Ioffe wrote last December, the release of the Panama Papers in April 2016 incensed the Russians because among the documents were claims about Putin’s personal wealth.
In an updated edition of their book, The Red Web, Russian journalists Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan—veteran reporters on the Russian secret services—revealed how and when Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the attack on the American election. It happened, according to Soldatov and Borogan, at a meeting in April between Putin and a small inner circle of his national security advisors, most of them former KGB officers. Putin’s decision was also reportedly an emotional, knee-jerk one, in retaliation to the release of the Panama Papers, which implicated him. Because of Putin’s highly conspirological mindset, he apparently blamed Goldman Sachs and Hillary Clinton for the release of the embarrassing information, Soldatov and Borogan reported.
Starting in 2014, the troll factory was given a budget of $1.25 million a month to, in the words of the indictment, “spread distrust toward the candidates and the political system in general.” Ioffe described the troll factory more fully:
[It] was largely staffed by college students from the prestigious St. Petersburg State University, Russia’s #2 university; their majors included international relations, linguistics, and journalism. They were, in other words, young, educated, worldly, and urban—the very cohort Americans imagine would rise up against someone like Putin. Instead, they worked in the factory, making nearly double the average Russian’s salary, sowing discord on Twitter, Facebook, and in the comments sections of various websites. They were instructed not to mention Russia, but instead to focus on issues that divided Americans, like guns and race. They learned their subject matter by reading Americans’ social media posts and by watching House of Cards, effectively weaponizing American culture and openness.
The Russian trolls posed as Americans and “communicated with unwitting individuals associated with the Trump campaign and other political activists.” The indictment alleges that the Russian campaign focused on battleground election states, crafted ads against Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, and after the elections staged rallies both for and against Trump
http://www.defenseone.com/threats/2018/02/what-internet-research-agency/146085/?oref=d-river
@Trotsky @HomerThompson @SBJJ
Found this saying the Panama papers were what lead to the Russian actions.
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Half the WR Trump bots are Russian spam bots.
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There was no fake dossier and the dossier had nothing to do with surveillance on political opponents. I think you're kind of piecing together an understanding from headlines and not actually reading the stories under them.
I doubt any of them are, but real people are so gullible when it comes to politics that they might as well be.
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It is, to a degree. They copy each other's statements and opinions sometimes intentionally, sometimes unwittingly. These days so much of the news starts with one person doing a story and then other outlets picking it up and repeating it rather than conducting a separate investigation into the details.
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I think it's "in addition to," not "rather than." One outlet breaks a story that is undoubtedly newsworthy so others then look into it and try to add to it or at least confirm it.
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What if it were some millennial's first time voting and they didn't have anyone else to tell them differently? Based upon all the other scams that depend upon social engineering, sometimes you can catch people just not questioning something like that.
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So, a bunch of guys without direct access to the information in the hands of the intelligence agencies make a bunch of educated guesses. Very credible.
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Are you calling the Nation fake news?
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No, I'm saying they make very clear in the article that these experts are speculating. Further, the group VIPS, is split on the issue, there is not even unanimous agreement internally about the findings. Are you saying a bunch of guys who don't have all the pertinent information are more likely to reliably assess a situation than the people who have all the information as well as equivalent expertise?
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Lol, what article were you reading?
I mean it says in the title. Evidence points to leak not hack.
Are these people lying?
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Still too dumb to vote.
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I'm trying really hard not to bring your reading comprehension into question since I find you an overall interesting poster, but...
"...we should have made certain that several of the article’s conclusions were presented as possibilities, not as certainties. And given the technical complexity of the material, we would have benefited from bringing on an independent expert to conduct a rigorous review of the VIPS technical claims.
We have obtained such a review in the last week from Nathan Freitas of the Guardian Project. He has evaluated both the VIPS memo and Lawrence’s article. Freitas lays out several scenarios in which the DNC could have been hacked from the outside, although he does not rule out a leak. Freitas concludes that all parties “must exercise much greater care in separating out statements backed by available digital metadata from thoughtful insights and educated guesses.” His findings are published here.
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That is some BS man. You need to work on your own reading comprehension.
Vips doesn't have evidence? Well neither does the government, or if they do, they aren't releasing it. So vips and the government are on equal footing there.
This is a analysis, by people who have standing and expertise to offer that opinion. The government has offered nothing more than this. Every criticism you launch at vips, turn it back and apply it to the government.
You are playing silly word games here.
