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by Sounder » Fri Sep 08, 2017 7:25 am
by seemslikeadream » Fri Sep 08, 2017 1:02 pm
How Russia Created the Most Popular Texas Secession Page on Facebook
When is a Texan not a Texan?
The stars at night are big and bright, deep in the heart of Moscow
Earlier this week, Facebook announced that they had shuttered almost 500 accounts they believe were associated with a Russian company that spent some $100,000 on ad buys since June 2015. As a release from Facebook noted, “these accounts and Pages were affiliated with one another and likely operated out of Russia.” Tabbing the accounts as “inauthentic,” Facebook added that the accounts and affiliated ads “focus[ed] on amplifying divisive social and political messages across the ideological spectrum — touching on topics from LGBT matters to race issues to immigration to gun rights.”
One other arena these actors may have targeted: secession movements within the U.S. At this point, it’s little secret that a number of American secession movements — including Puerto Rico, Hawaii, and both white and black nationalists — have constructed links with Russian actors, including those funded by the Kremlin. Tracing these links has become an unexpected hobby of mine, and I’ve written on the topic a handful of times, from The Diplomat to Slate to The Daily Beast.
Moscow’s ties to the California secession movement, which received a boost following Donald Trump’s election, has seen the greatest coverage — understandably so, given the former #Calexit leader’s willingness to highlight his links to the Moscow-funded Anti-Globalization Movement of Russia (AGMR) at every turn. Only so many people would be willing to open a “California Embassy” in Moscow, after all. (For my own writings on #Calexit’s myriad ties to Russia, in addition to the links above, click here, here, or here.) As Jonathon Morgan, the founder of Data for Democracy, noted a few months back in detailing the online footprint of Russia and California secessionists, the primary group pushing #Calexit was further “amplified by many of the same accounts that infiltrated conservative Twitter communities and promoted a pro-Trump, white nationalist agenda.” Not exactly an organic upswell.
#Calexit was further “amplified by many of the same accounts that infiltrated conservative Twitter communities and promoted a pro-Trump, white nationalist agenda.”
But for all of the egregious links between Russia and California separatists, the earliest foray into ties between Moscow-linked actors and American secession movements, per my research, was found in my former home: Texas. Back in 2015, I put together a piece for POLITICO Magazine detailing the ties between Lone Star secessionists and Russia, dovetailing off a recent visit from the Texas “foreign minister” to St. Petersburg, where the Texan turned to Russian media to fan the flames of secession. As local Russian officials were threatening to deliver arms to Mexico (and unidentified “guerrillas”) to allow Mexico City to reclaim Texas, Texas secessionists themselves were finding sympathetic ears in Moscow.
Smile! Secede!
Then, in 2016, the same “foreign minister,” the Texas Nationalist Movement’s (TNM) Nathan Smith, returned to Russia, attending the same pro-secession conference as the California secessionists — and, this time, with the AGMR, the group behind the conference, receiving funding from the Kremlin. In the time since, it’s come out that the AGMR also helped fund the Texan’s travel to Russia.
But promotional efforts behind Smith’s trip were kept to a minimum. Not only did the TNM not mention Smith’s travel to Moscow — despite promoting his stop-overs in France and the U.K. — but the only evidence of Smith’s presence, besides a clip shared by RT (see 0:12), is a tweet from, of all people, former #Calexit head Louis Marinelli.
And that’s where the evidence, as of mid-2017, stood, as it pertained to Moscow’s links with Texas separatism. Funding for travel to, and organizing in, Moscow; plumping support in Russian-backed outlets like RT and Sputnik; odd comments about funding Mexican guerrillas to claim lands lost. Noteworthy enough developments, but without much evidence of success, or much lasting impact.
***
Enter the “Heart of Texas.” The Facebook site, for the past two years, existed as the most prominent Texas secession social media presence online. With over 225,000 followers as of summer 2017, the page, at one point last year, boasted more Facebook fans than the official Texas Democrat and Republican pages combined.
The page was laced with the kind of xenophobic, nativist, and anti-immigrant material many still associate with the Texas secession movement. Plenty of posts targeted Muslim immigrants and refugees, slammed liberals and LGBT activists, condemned vegetarians and Hillary Clinton. Taken on its face, the “Heart of Texas” page plugged material largely associated the American far-right — an amalgamation of InfoWars conspiracy, neo-Confederate separatism, and white nationalist calls for a return to an America past. The page supported the armed insurgents in Malheur, pushed conspiracies surrounding Jade Helm and Antonin Scalia’s death, shared fake Founding Father quotes, and came with the type of Texas-first chauvinism few other states can match:
Let’s keep Texas Texan, and Texas secession pages foreign
But there was always something off about the “Heart of Texas” page. There was no contact information ever listed, for instance. Unlike TNM, there was no address, no phone number. No individuals identified behind the “Heart of Texas” page. Unlike those fake news pages run by Macedonian teens, there were never any ads placed on the pages, meaning the project was either a bizarre labor of love or something backed by some kind of money. Likewise, while it’s unclear when the Facebook page was founded, the site’s Twitter page (twitter.com/itstimetosecede) went live in November 2015 — within the time-frame listed by Facebook for its surge of Russia-linked “inauthentic” accounts. And when it came to the site’s paltry “about” section, all we learned was that “Texas’s the land protected by Lord [sic].”
Protected by the Lord, but not by grammar
And then there were the typos. Horrible, no-good, laugh-till-you-cry typos, lining every other post, especially through 2016. There’s no possible way I can capture the types of aggressively strange typos — often complete with Russian grammatical structures, no less — in a synopsis, so I’ll let these posts provide an overview of the type of grammar and spelling the “Heart of Texas” page brought to bear:
The site also ginned up Election Day-related outrage, calling on Texans to “look who vote [sic] in the elections in order to avoid large groups of voting illegal migrants.”
If the site was limited to eye-bleeding typos and paeans to Dr. Pepper and Whataburger, the page might have been simply another odd, tone-deaf attempt from actors trying to collect fans who don’t care about things like literacy or fact-based analysis. Idiotic, sure — but largely harmless.
Last November, however, the “Heart of Texas” page tried to roll into the real world, organizing a series of Nov. 5 rallies across the state. Claiming that “It’s time to say a strong NO to the establishment robbers,” the page said a Clinton victory would lead to “higher taxes to feed undocumented aliens,” more “refugees, mosques, and terrorist attacks,” and even the outright banning of guns. “We are free citizens of Texas and we’ve had enough of this cheap show on the screen,” the organizers wrote.
The “Heart of Texas” Twitter page also plugged the rallies — even offering to send details via direct message — while its Facebook complement “drew up an approximate map for the #Texit statewide rally,” whatever that means. The site further called for supporters to “open carry” and “make photos.” For some reason, the Facebook page also included a picture of Chris Kyle, co-opting the American veteran’s legacy into the secession movement.
“Secede IF Hillary!”
As it is, the rallies didn’t generate much participation — only a few dozen people showed up at scattered sites across the state, if memory serves correctly. (In combing my screenshots, it doesn’t look like I snagged any screen-caps of the small turnout, unfortunately.) But in transferring its support from online to on-the-ground participation, the move mirrored, in a certain sense, the Columbian Chemicals plant explosion hoax in Louisiana, perpetrated, presumably, by Russian actors.
But the rally organization did do one thing. In gathering online support, the “Heart of Texas” page obtained identities of potential supporters of Texas secession — supporters whose information the folks at the “Heart of Texas” said they would pass along to the TNM. That is to say, the “Heart of Texas” page — a page likely run by foreign, presumably Russian, actors — was putting its talents toward recruiting for a very real Texas secession organization, one that had already received funding from a Kremlin-backed group.
***
For the past few months, things seemed hunky-dory for the folks behind “Heart of Texas.” They chugged along, posting much of the same material, albeit recently (and unfortunately, for those laughing along) cleaning up many of its typos.
Then, Facebook announced it was cleaning up hundreds of “inauthentic” accounts linked to Russia. And like that, the “Heart of Texas,” along with its Twitter page, was gone. Just like that, Facebook’s most popular Texas secession page was no more.
While no Russian actors have come forward to claim responsibility for the site, there’s any amount of circumstantial evidence — the typos and grammatical structure; the strategic goals behind the site, and the fact that it was shuttered at the same time as hundreds of other Russian-linked fake pages; the parallel rhetoric put forth by other Russia-linked, U.S. domestic politics-related pages; even the ties with the TNM, a group already supported materially by a Kremlin-financed outfit — pointing to actors in Russia as the ones pulling the site’s secession strings.
So RIP, “Heart of Texas.” We hardly knew ye. (Literally.) Looking forward to seeing where pro-secession foreign actors turn to next on Facebook — and where we can enjoy those wonderful typos once more. After all, as “Heart of Texas” told us, for those in love with Texas shape, always be ready for a Texas size.
https://medium.com/@cjcmichel/how-russi ... 4dfd05ee5c
by seemslikeadream » Fri Sep 08, 2017 4:36 pm
by seemslikeadream » Thu Sep 21, 2017 9:41 am
Edward SnowdenVerified account
@Snowden
Plot twist: @Wikileaks publishes details on Russia's increasingly oppressive internet surveillance industry. https://wikileaks.org/spyfiles/russia/ …
ROUND ‘EM UP
Exclusive: Russians Appear to Use Facebook to Push Trump Rallies in 17 U.S. Cities
‘Being Patriotic,’ a Facebook group uncovered by The Daily Beast, is the first evidence of suspected Russian provocateurs explicitly mobilizing Trump supporters in real life.
BEN COLLINS
GIDEON RESNICK
KEVIN POULSEN
SPENCER ACKERMAN
09.20.17 11:39 AM ET
Suspected Russia propagandists on Facebook tried to organize more than a dozen pro-Trump rallies in Florida during last year’s election, The Daily Beast has learned.
The demonstrations—at least one of which was promoted online by local pro-Trump activists— brought dozens of supporters together in real life. They appear to be the first case of Russian provocateurs successfully mobilizing Americans over Facebook in direct support of Donald Trump.
The Aug. 20, 2016, events were collectively called “Florida Goes Trump!” and they were billed as a “patriotic state-wide flash mob,” unfolding simultaneously in 17 different cities and towns in the battleground state. It’s difficult to determine how many of those locations actually witnessed any turnout, in part because Facebook’s recent deletion of hundreds of Russian accounts hid much of the evidence. But videos and photos from two of the locations—Fort Lauderdale and Coral Springs—were reposted to a Facebook page run by the local Trump campaign chair, where they remain to this day.
“On August 20, we want to gather patriots on the streets of Floridian towns and cities and march to unite America and support Donald Trump!” read the Facebook event page for the demonstrations. “Our flash mob will occur in several places at the same time; more details about locations will be added later. Go Donald!”
The Florida flash mob was one of at least four pro-Trump or anti-Hillary Clinton demonstrations conceived and organized over a Facebook page called “Being Patriotic,” and a related Twitter account called “march_for_trump.” (The Daily Beast identified the accounts in a software-assisted review of politically themed social-media profiles.)
Being Patriotic had 200,000 followers and the strongest activist bent of any of the suspected Russian Facebook election pages that have so far emerged. Events promoted by the page last year included a July “Down With Hillary!” protest outside Clinton’s New York campaign headquarters, a September 11 pro-Trump demonstration in Manhattan, simultaneous “Miners for Trump” demonstrations in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh in October, and a pro-Trump rally outside Trump Tower last November, after his election victory.
The ‘Next Level’ of Election Interference
The Being Patriotic Facebook page was closed in August 2017—right when Facebook purged accounts secretly operated by a notorious St. Petersburg troll factory called Internet Research Agency. According to a public report by U.S. intelligence agencies (PDF), Internet Research Agency is financed by “a close Putin ally with ties to Russian intelligence.” Being Patriotic’s posts included scores of pro-Trump or anti-Clinton memes framed and watermarked in the same style as those found on the Heart of Texas and Secured Borders Facebook pages previously identified as Russian operations.
The Being Patriotic Twitter account was suspended at around the same time.
A Facebook spokesman told The Daily Beast the company was “not able to confirm any of the details here,” in response to a question about the Russian origin of Being Patriotic, but did not challenge The Daily Beast’s reporting.
On Sept. 6, Facebook acknowledged for the first time that inauthentic accounts from 2015 to 2017 promoted what the company’s chief security officer, Alex Stamos, characterized as “divisive social and political messages across the ideological spectrum.” But Stamos said that most of the fraudulent activity it found—some 3,000 ads connected to 470 now-shuttered accounts linked to Russian troll farms—“didn’t specifically reference the U.S. presidential election, voting, or a particular candidate.”
After The Daily Beast found known Russian accounts that used Facebook’s Events tool to promote rallies inside the United States, the company said that it was not well positioned to determine “if something like coordination occurred” between the Trump campaign and Russia—something investigators and security researchers doubt because of the social network’s massive trove of information on its customers.
But the discovery of the Being Patriotic rallies suggests that the fraudulent activity on Facebook did indeed involve messaging on behalf of Trump, did prompt at least some Americans to rally on Trump’s behalf, and did result in the Trump campaign volunteers subsequently sharing material from those events.
The pro-Trump events represent “the next level” of suspected Russian influence operations, said Clint Watts, a former FBI agent who has testified about those operations to a Senate committee investigating them.
“This would be a direct effort that they attempted that’s more than online promotion,” Watts told The Daily Beast. “‘Let’s organize and try to get people to move to events in a proactive way around a candidate. Again, if it traces back to Russia, you can’t deny that’s foreign influence in an election.”
Railing Against #BLM, Too
The extent of Being Patriotic’s impact is not clear. In June of last year, for example, the Being Patriotic Facebook page asked participants to “gather in front of Trump Tower, N.Y.” The event received call-outs on Facebook and Twitter, and 138 people marked themselves as “attending” on Facebook. Over 400 marked themselves as interested.
March_For_Trump specifically reached out to Nick Toma, a local news anchor in Scranton, Pennsylvania, for coverage of a “Miners for Trump” rally it promoted last October, only a month before the election.
“@NickTomaWBRE Hi, Nick! We're holding a ‘Miners for Trump’ rally tomorrow. If you're interested in covering it, please let us know,” March_for_Trump wrote on October 1st.
When Toma was emailed the link to the tweet, he told The Daily Beast: “Don’t recall ever seeing it before.”
Facebook has turned over some of the illicit ads to special prosecutor Robert Mueller after a federal judge issued a search warrant for the material, according to CNN. Facebook also showed congressional investigators that material but did not leave it with them. Legislators investigating Russian involvement in the 2016 election have expressed frustration over what they describe as insufficient disclosures to Congress, and have indicated that they will seek public testimony from Facebook and other social-media companies.
Watts, the former FBI agent and a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, noted that “plausible deniability is built into any Russian active-measures strategy,” such as using troll farms in St. Petersburg or Macedonia to conceal influence campaigns. But compelling unsuspecting Americans to gather in the streets on behalf of Trump shows the reach and efficacy of those efforts.
The page earned such a large following, a known Macedonian fake news distributor, Nikola Tanevski, purchased BeingPatriotic.com this year, but the page is currently dormant. Tanevski runs popular, pro-Trump fake news factories USATwentyFour.com and TheAmericanBacon.com. Attempts to reach Tanevski did not receive a response.
The layers of deception went beyond Facebook posts and manufactured rallies. When it wasn’t organizing events, Being Patriotic encouraged violence against minorities in incendiary posts. “Arrest and shoot every sh*thead taking part in burning our flag! #BLM vs #USA,” Being Patriotic’s Twitter account posted in April 2016, using the hashtag for the Black Lives Matter protest movement.
The account also advertised a toll-free “Being Patriotic Hotline” to report instances of voter fraud on Election Day.
“Detected a voter fraud? Tell us about it! Call 888-486-8102 or take photo/video and send it to us,” the account wrote on Nov. 8. Being Patriotic’s sister account, @March_for_Trump, plugged the same phone number, as well as a hotline for the “Trump Lawyer Team.” The number is now disconnected.
‘Broward’s Most Famous Trump Fan’
When asked for comment, the White House referred The Daily Beast to the Trump campaign, which, in turn, did not respond to emailed questions. But Susie Wiles, who served as Trump’s campaign manager in Florida, told The Daily Beast that the Broward County portion of the flash mob “was not an official campaign event.”
That’s despite the fact that the event was promoted on “Official Donald J. Trump for President Campaign Facebook Page for Broward County, Florida.” Photos and videos of the demonstration were posted there afterward.
When emailed the link to the Facebook posting, Wiles told The Daily Beast: “There are groups such as this across the state—and maybe other places, too. Groups of people get together and establish a presence such as this but it is unaffiliated with the campaign, per se. The photos ring no bells with me.”
Wiles also said that the Trump campaign’s purported Broward County Facebook page, which markets itself as being “official,” was not set up by the campaign.
“The Donald Trump campaign did not set these Facebook pages up,” she told The Daily Beast. “Rather, supporters (like the lady registered as the contact) set them up to support the campaign and subsequently the president.”
The “lady” registered as the contact is Dolly Trevino Rump, the Trump campaign’s chairwoman for Broward County who, until this April, was also the secretary of the local Republican Party. The Miami Herald described her as “perhaps Broward’s most famous Donald Trump fan.” Rump did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Daily Beast. Neither did the chairman of the Broward County Republican Party.
The Being Patriotic event listings for its Florida flashmobs included the names and phone numbers of people listed as local volunteer coordinators. When contacted by The Daily Beast, two of those coordinators vaguely recalled the events taking place, but not much else.
Betty Triguera, who was listed as a coordinator for a gathering in Sarasota, Florida, told The Daily Beast that she recalled but didn’t attend the event.
“We got the information from it on Twitter but I didn’t go,” Triguera said unable to remember other details.
Jim Frische, who was listed as a coordinator for an event in Clearwater, Florida, told The Daily Beast that he was called about organizing an event and put one together.
He said he was unsure if it was organized by the campaign.
“I don’t recall the group’s name,” Frische said. “I know somebody called and said would you organize something so I put together a group. “I remember doing it and I think we had a dozen or so people out on the street corner. I remember afterward hearing it had happened all over the state.”
—with additional reporting by Sam Stein
http://www.thedailybeast.com/russians-a ... in-florida
Facebook will face Senate during Russian probe hearing
Senator Richard Burr believes the social network has a lot more to say about Russia's ad buys.
Mariella Moon, @mariella_moon
7h ago in Internet
A recent report said Facebook still hasn't discovered the exact number of fake news ads Russian-linked advertisers bought before and after the 2016 Presidential Elections. We might find out if that's true in the near future, because according to Bloomberg, the Senate Intelligence Committee expects the social network's representatives to testify at a public hearing. The committee plans to look into Russia's use of social media to meddle in the elections, and Facebook will most likely have to answer questions about the ads it sold to fake news rings.
Earlier this month, Facebook admitted that it sold at least $100,000 worth of ads that led to fake news pages during the elections. Both the inauthentic accounts and the advertisers that paid for the ads operate out of Russia. The social network also admitted that it wasn't equipped to filter out those kinds of advertisements -- its contractors were only on the lookout for violent and sexually explicit materials. CNN says Facebook already handed evidence over to special counsel Robert Mueller and his team to help them uncover who's behind the ads.
Committee Chairman Richard Burr, however, believes that "Facebook has been less than forthcoming on potentially how they were used." The panel still has to decide the scope of the hearing and when it will take place, but based on Burr's statement, Facebook's reps may have to prepare for a grilling.
https://www.engadget.com/2017/09/20/fac ... c-hearing/
Russian Agents Used Facebook to Organize Pro-Trump 'Flash Mobs': Report
Events included rallies with names like "Down with Hillary!" and "Miners for Trump."
By Brad Reed / Raw Story September 20, 2017, 9:25 AM GMT
A new report from the Daily Beast sheds more light on how Russian intelligence operatives used Facebook to organize support for Donald Trump’s candidacy during the 2016 presidential election.
According to the report, a Russian-sponsored Facebook group called “Being Patriotic” helped organize and promote multiple Trump rallies and events throughout the election campaign, including a pro-Trump “flash mob” in Florida that was promoted by a local Trump campaign chairman, who posted photos from the event on his Facebook page.
“On August 20, we want to gather patriots on the streets of Floridian towns and cities and march to unite America and support Donald Trump!” said the Facebook event page for the events. “Our flash mob will occur in several places at the same time; more details about locations will be added later. Go Donald!”
The “flash mobs” weren’t the only events that the Being Patriotic group organizer, either. The Daily Beast also found that “events promoted by the page last year included a July “Down With Hillary!” protest outside Clinton’s New York campaign headquarters, a September 11 pro-Trump demonstration in Manhattan, simultaneous “Miners for Trump” demonstrations in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh in October, and a pro-Trump rally outside Trump Tower last November, after his election victory.”
At its peak, Being Patriotic had 200,000 followers on Facebook. It was shut down last month, shortly before Facebook publicly disclosed that it had received cash from Russian groups for political ads during the 2016 election.
Are We Missing a Big Part of the Facebook Story?
By JOSH MARSHALL Published SEPTEMBER 20, 2017 7:04 PM
Over recent weeks we’ve learned much more about how Russian operatives used Facebook to support Donald Trump, attack Hillary Clinton and spread conspiracy theories pumped up the heat of the 2016 campaign. One big question has been: how effectively did they target those messages, given Facebook’s vast ability to target messages? And if they did target their messages to areas of particular Democratic weakness in states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, how were they able to do that? Where did they get the data to drive the effort?
One possibility is obvious: Maybe the Trump campaign gave the Russians access to their data and voter files. To date, there’s at least no public evidence that this happened.
But maybe it didn’t have to.
What I’m about to relay is not new information. But I’m not sure it’s been considered in the context of the new information about Facebook and other digital campaigns apparently run by the Russian disruption campaign which we’ve only learned about quite recently.
Back in May The Wall Street Journal ran a fascinating article about a Florida political operative named Aaron Nevins. When news reports surfaced identifying the online persona Guccifer 2.0 as the one who had the files hacked from the DNC, Aarons essentially cold-emailed Guccifer 2.0 and asked if he had any material to share on Florida. That was on August 12th, 2016. It turns out he did. A lot.
10 days later Guccifer 2.0 sent Nevins 2.5 gigabytes of data from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Note that that is different from the Democratic National Committee (DNC), the hack we’re most familiar with. The Journal described the documents like this …
DCCC documents sent to Mr. Nevins analyzed specific Florida districts, showing how many people were dependable Democratic voters, how many were likely Democratic voters but needed a nudge, how many were frequent voters but not committed, and how many were core Republican voters—the kind of data strategists use in planning ad buys and other tactics.
The Journal reviewed these documents as well as Democratic voter analyses also sent to Mr. Nevins about congressional districts in Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia.
Nevins posted some of that data on his anonymous Florida politics blog. Guccifer 2.0 in turn sent that link to Roger Stone. There’s a whole other mystery about what happened to that data from there, who may have used it, what Stone did with it and so forth. But let’s set that aside for the moment. Nevins just asked for whatever “Florida based information” Guccifer 2.0 might have. He had a lot. There’s every reason to believe that Guccifer 2.0 had comparable data for other states and that he had data from multiple Democratic campaign committees. At least he had information from the DCCC and the DNC.
US intelligence believes Guccifer 2.0 is a fictive persona created by Russian military intelligence. The Facebook campaigns appear to have been run out of a St. Petersburg, Russia troll farm called the Internet Research Agency (IRA). The IRA is nominally a privately owned operation. But it seems clearly to work on behalf of the Russian government, even if it is technically independent from it. In any case, the big picture should be clear. If the Russian election disruption campaign needed election and voter data to effectively target its digital campaigns, they seem to have had a lot of it, precisely the kind of detailed data on strong partisans and more marginal voters that would be key to directing such an effort.
Certainly, whoever was calling the shots on the Russian side might still need assistance making sense of them. At a minimum they’d need a reader of English and some basics of US geography. But far from needing guidance from the Trump campaign, they likely had – at least in some respects – better data than they did. At a minimum, they had Democratic side data which could have been used to great effect on its own or created an even fuller picture if married to the data Republicans and the Trump campaign had.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/are ... re-1084524
Facebook Knows More About Russia’s Election Meddling. Shouldn’t We?
Mediator
Jim Rutenberg
MEDIATOR SEPT. 17, 2017
A Facebook mural on the company’s campus in 2014. Facebook is under fire for running ads purchased by fake users trying to cause disruption in the American electorate. Credit Jeff Chiu/Associated Press
Here’s what we know, so far, about Facebook’s recent disclosure that a shadowy Russian firm with ties to the Kremlin created thousands of ads on the social media platform that ran before, during and after the 2016 presidential election:
The ads “appeared to focus on amplifying divisive social and political messages across the ideological spectrum,” including race, immigration and gun rights, Facebook said.
The users who purchased the ads were fakes. Attached to assumed identities, their pages were allegedly created by digital guerrilla marketers from Russia hawking information meant to disrupt the American electorate and sway a presidential election.
Some of those ads were pushed out to very specific parts of the country, presumably for maximum political effect. Facebook has identified some 2,000 other ads that may have been of Russian provenance, although, as CNN reported last week, it can’t rule out that there might be far more than that.
Here’s what we don’t know, at least not directly from Facebook:
• What all of those ads looked like
• What specific information – or disinformation — they were spreading
• Who or what the accounts pretended to be
• How many Americans interacted with the ads or the fake personae
We also don’t know what geographical locations the alleged social media saboteurs were targeting (The regular list of swing states and counties? Or the most politically flammable fringes?). Facebook says that more of those ads ran in 2015 than in 2016, but not how many more.
Nor has Facebook reported whether the people who were targeted were from specific demographic or philosophical groups — all of which means we really don’t know the full extent of the duping on Facebook, and maybe Facebook doesn’t either.
Facebook says it is working to prevent a repeat. And it was hardly the only platform that Russia is presumed to have used to disrupt the political debate in America; there were others in the mix as well, particularly Twitter, which has divulged even less than Facebook has.
But, in total, there’s a stunning lack of public specificity about an alleged foreign campaign to influence our domestic politics. It was an effort that involved “the American companies that essentially invented the tools of social media and, in this case, did not stop them from being turned into engines of deception and propaganda,” as The Times’s Scott Shane noted in his penetrating investigation earlier this month.
Mr. Shane’s report helped fill in some blanks when he unearthed several of the phony accounts, like that of one Melvin Redick, a professed Pennsylvanian. On his Facebook page, Mr. Redick appears to be a loving dad of an adorable little girl, but as it turns out he doesn’t actually exist. That account was early to spot and promote DCLeaks, the site that became a receptacle for hacked information about prominent Americans.
And then last week The Daily Beast uncovered a promotion for a supposed “Citizens before refugees” rally in Twin Falls, Idaho, in August of 2016. As the independent (and embattled) Russian news organization RBC reported in March, the supposed group behind that rally, SecuredBorders, was the creation of the Internet Research Agency, which is suspected of being behind the Facebook ads in question here.
So a picture starts to emerge. But it’s a spotty one, only as good as the journalism that’s working so hard to fill the canvas, and the scraps we’re getting from law enforcement and the social platforms themselves.
Facebook is cooperating to varying degrees with efforts in Washington to understand how it might have been used by Russian influence agents. As The Wall Street Journal first reported late last week, Facebook handed evidence related to the ad campaign over to the special prosecutor investigating the Russia allegations, Robert S. Mueller III.
When I asked Facebook why it couldn’t be more forthcoming with the public, the company responded with a statement saying, “Due to federal law, and the ongoing investigation into these issues, we are limited as to what we can disclose publicly.”
Facebook is referring to its obligations under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the federal law that prohibits the government from unduly spying on our electronic communications.
Photo
Posts taken from SecuredBorders, a Kremlin-tied Facebook page that posed as an American activist group and spread provocative anti-immigrant messages.
Facebook, which didn’t elaborate, appears to be saying it is legally restricted from the willy-nilly handing-over of information about its users to the government or, for that matter, the public. And it’s certainly a challenge for Facebook to decide where the line is between sharing vital details about its use in a plot like election meddling, and exposing private data about its legitimate users.
On Friday, I asked Marc Rotenberg, the president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, or Epic, an advocacy group, where he stood on the question.
“The best case for that is that the First Amendment protects anonymous speech,” he said. “And if the United States government were to try to comprehend the identities of controversial speakers, we’d be up on the front lines saying the government doesn’t have the right to do that.”
But in this case, “We’re talking about non-U.S. persons engaging in political speech in U.S. elections, and it’s a stretch to extend that kind of protection to this type of activity,” he said.
Ryan Calo, a law professor at the University of Washington, told me that the electronic communications privacy law did not extend protections to advertisements or posted messages that were readily accessible to the public.
That’s not to say that Mr. Mueller’s involvement doesn’t add to the sensitivity for Facebook. It does. But sooner rather than later Facebook owes it to the public to provide still more detail about the ads. And it owes it to its users to let them know if they have directly interacted with the equivalent of digital spies sent to influence them.
Then there’s democracy itself, and the new problems the social platforms are creating for it.
The American electoral system includes a complicated campaign finance regime that was devised to keep Americans informed about who finances the media messages designed to sway them.
The system is imperfect. And it’s been badly weakened over the years. But it still requires, for instance, that television stations keep careful logs of the ad time they sell to candidates and political groups around elections, and make them available to the public. It is also illegal for foreign interests to spend money in our campaigns.
The Russian effort was able to elude those laws through social media, where the system has clearly — and fundamentally — broken down.
“We now know that foreign interests can run campaign ads — sham issue ads — in this country without anyone having any knowledge of who was behind it, and that fundamentally violates a basic concept of campaign finance laws,” said Fred Wertheimer, a longtime advocate for greater regulation of political spending through his group Democracy21.
Facebook’s announcement about the Russian ads prompted calls from Senators Mark Warner of Virginia and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico for a new law requiring that social media ads receive the same regulatory scrutiny as television ads (“I’m Vladimir Putin and I approve this message!”).
As of now, we don’t even know the full extent to which the Russian ads violated the current legal requirements. That’s something Mr. Mueller should be able to determine. But Facebook and other platforms need to get more information out there publicly, too, so the necessary discussion about potential remedies doesn’t have to wait for the Mueller investigation to conclude. Hopefully they will.
This much should be clear: Arguments that sites like Facebook are merely open “platforms” — and not “media companies” that make editorial judgments about activity in the digital worlds they created — fall woefully flat when it comes to meddling in our democracy.
The platforms have become incredibly powerful in a short amount of time. With great power has come great profit, which they are only too happy to embrace; the great responsibility part, not always so much.
“Given the role they played in this election, they now have a major responsibility to help solve this problem,” Mr. Wertheimer said.
After all, the 2018 midterms are just around the corner.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/17/busi ... ussia.html
by elfismiles » Thu Sep 21, 2017 12:27 pm
by Grizzly » Fri Sep 22, 2017 8:25 am
by conniption » Fri Sep 22, 2017 7:57 pm
by Sounder » Sat Sep 23, 2017 5:19 am
.......In conclusion, let me go out on a limb and venture a guess as to where this is all heading. I think that now that all the evidence is in that America’s superpower status is just a bit of Cold War nostalgia what comes next is… punishment. What do mommy and daddy do with a spoiled brat who has maxed out his credit cards squandering money on bar tabs, fancy toys and hookers? Why, take the credit cards away, of course!
In the case of the US, this action goes by the name of dedollarization. Those who have attempted it before—figures such as Saddam Hussein and Muammar Qaddafy—were swiftly killed and their countries destroyed. But now such countries as China and Russia are heading up the dedollarization drive—countries that the US cannot hope to oppose, especially when they act in concert—and the American response so far has amounted to empty threats, toothless sanctions and a great deal of angry but incoherent mumbling.
To describe the situation in the simplest terms possible: the function of the US military is to intimidate other countries into letting the US buy whatever it wants by printing US dollars as needed, essentially robbing the rest of the world at gunpoint. Once their ability to intimidate the world into submission is gone so will be their ability to endlessly fleece the planet. And once that ability is gone all that will remain of the “richest country in the world” is a pile of worthless paper.
by conniption » Sun Sep 24, 2017 4:35 pm
RT
Oh my God, Morgan Freeman declares war on Russia!
Neil Clark
Published time: 21 Sep, 2017
© Carlo Allegri / Reuters
If I’d said the words ‘Morgan Freeman’ to you earlier this week, and asked what they meant to you, I’m sure you’d have replied along the lines of: ‘Kind and friendly looking elderly actor with a rich speaking voice who specializes in playing benign roles- including God.
I’m sure you would not have said: ‘Idiotic front man for a hard-right neocon operation backed by Bush-era warmongers and a former Director of National Intelligence to demonize Russia and make the new Cold War even colder.’
Sadly, that’s what The Morg has become.
The 80-year old Hollywood actor has recorded a two minute video for the newly-formed ‘Committee to Investigate Russia'. Imagine the most foaming-at-the-mouth Russophobia you’ve ever witnessed and multiply it by ten, and you’ve got Freeman’s message. The man from Memphis who earned plaudits for his performances in movies such as The Shawshank Redemption, has morphed into an octogenarian version of Anne Applebaum on steroids.
"We have been attacked", Freeman declares at the start of the video. "We are at war". Well, this much is true. The US has been at war with lots of countries for some time now. War is what America does. But Freeman isn’t talking about the illegal invasion of Iraq, the 78-day bombing of Yugoslavia, the dropping of the ‘Mother of All Bombs’ on Afghanistan, or the destruction of Libya. He’s talking about a non-existent attack on the country which does all the attacking.
He then goes into full Hollywood fantasy mode, asking us to imagine a “script” in which “a former KGB spy, angry at the collapse of his Motherland, plots a course for revenge”. He is referring to Vladimir Putin, the man who was so hell-bent on “revenge” against the US, that he was the first world leader to pick up the phone after 9/11 to offer his condolences to George Bush.
Not only that, but the ‘former KGB spy’ has called repeatedly for Russia and ‘his sworn enemy’ to work together on solving global issues such as terrorism. The truth is that the ‘former KGB spy’ has bent over backwards to be friendly to the US, while the US has repaid him by sanctioning his country and portraying him as the ‘New Hitler’. If we must talk about ‘revenge' then it’s the vindictive neocon war lobby who are plotting a course for it, against Russia, for thwarting their plans for a violent regime change against the secular government in Syria.
But Freeman won’t mention that, because he is the public face of a new neocon operation against Russia.
The old actor then accuses the evil ‘former KGB spy’ (boo and hiss in the front row, please) of “secretly using cyber warfare to attack democracies around the world” - and using social media to “spread propaganda and false information,” to convince people in “democratic societies” to “distrust their media, their political processes, even their neighbours.”
How utterly disgusting! Well it would be if it were true. But of course it isn’t. Neocon propaganda never is. Remember those Iraqi WMDs, the ‘genocide’ in Kosovo and the claims that Iran was developing nukes? All hogwash, just like ‘Russiagate’.
No credible evidence has been produced that Russia has been "using cyber-warfare to attack democracies around the world". It’s a conspiracy theory put around by people who write books and articles about conspiracy theories. And it’s not been any Russian use of ‘social media’ which has caused people in the US to distrust their newspapers and television networks - but the way such media has been caught out spreading blatantly fake news - like the claim that Saddam possessed WMDs.
Americans can see for themselves what a rotten charade their own political process is by simply observing that whoever they elect, Wall Street and the military-industrial complex remains firmly in charge. As for Putin getting people to distrust their neighbors; this surely has to be the barmiest claim from the Russophobes yet. If Mort and Walt have a fight over the height of a garden fence in Milwaukee, then only a total nut job could blame the Kremlin. Or perhaps the ‘former KGB spy’ sent ‘thought messages’ across to Mort making him suspicious of neighbor Walt’s plan to erect a gazebo…
Freeman boldly declares “the free world is counting on us for our leadership.” Really, old boy? The last time I checked the calendar it was 2017, not 1947. The world - whether the State Department classes it as ‘free’ or ‘non-free’ - has seen what the death and destruction the US and its closest allies have caused across the world in recent decades. The assault on Iraq led directly to the rise of ISIS. The attack on Libya transformed the country with the highest Human Development Index in Africa into a jihadists’ playground on the shores of the Mediterranean. The obsession with toppling a government friendly to Russia in Afghanistan, gave us Al-Qaeda.
No one elected the US to be the world’s policeman. In fact, polls consistently show that the US is regarded by citizens of the world as the greatest threat to peace.
Clearly Morgan Freeman hasn’t heard about this. He really needs to get out more.
At 1 minute, 41 seconds into his speech, Freeman then makes arguably his most outrageous and big-headed statement of all. “For 241 years our democracy has been a shining example to the world of what we can all aspire to.”
He’s speaking about a country where slavery was only abolished in 1865, and enforced racial segregation on buses only ended in the 1950s. For all its razzmatazz, ‘democracy’ in the US boils down to the choice of two almost identical ‘Pepsi or Coke’, pro-war big business parties. Whoever wins, the policies on the things that really matter, stay the same.
Not only that, the US has destroyed genuine democracy in many countries around the world, illegally toppling governments which don’t meet with the State Department’s approval- and meddling in foreign elections in order to get the ‘desired‘ result.
Yet Freeman has the nerve to accuse Russia of doing what US does on a regular basis- including to Russia in the 1996 Presidential election.
As Freeman’s video nears its end there are the inevitable shots of American servicemen in action during World War Two. "We owe it to the brave people who have fought and died to protect this great nation and save democracy- and we owe it to our future generations - to continue the fight."
US soldiers were brave in World War Two, no one disputes that, but there’s no mention that in the fight against the Nazis, in which the US lost around 418,000 people, the Russians and Soviets lost 27m. That wouldn’t quite fit the narrative of ‘The Exceptional Nation’ and the ‘Exceptional Nation’ alone saving the ‘free world’, would it?
Freeman’s video ends with a call to arms: "Join the Committee to Investigate Russia - because the world depends on it!"
In fact, the only Committee genuine democrats should be joining is one to investigate the Committee to Investigate Russia. The job wouldn’t take too long, as you don‘t need to be Lieutenant Colombo to work out ‘whodunit?’ and what their motive is. The launch of the group was announced on Tuesday by the Hollywood film director and staunch Hillary Clinton fan boy Rob Reiner, and David Frum, the hardcore neocon and former Bush speechwriter who coined the notorious phrase ‘Axis of Evil’.
"I don’t know that the public understands the gravity of what the Russians were able to do and and continue to do here in the United States. They’ve attacked us. They’re trying to undermine our democracy," Reiner told CNN.
The plot of his 1987 fairy tale adventure, The Princess Bride, which involves the rescue of the lovely Princess Buttercup from the hideous Prince Humperdinck, is more plausible than the Reds under the beds narrative he is currently spinning.
The members of the CIR’s ‘Advisory Board’ are neocon blogger and CFR fellow Max Boot, Norman Ornstein, a resident scholar at the neocon think tank, the AEI, James Clapper, former DNI director, and Charles Sykes, a right-wing chat show host. Yet, we’re supposed to believe that it’s all a ‘progressive’ cause in support of ‘democracy’, because the man who makes the video once played God and Nelson Mandela.
The CIR shows us the strong links between ‘liberal’ Hollywood, the deep state and the neocon aristocracy. In fact,it comes just a fortnight after the Independent newspaper in Britain revealed that "the relationship between US national security and Hollywood is much deeper and more political than anyone has ever acknowledged."
Files the paper obtained showed that between 1911 and 2017 over 800 feature films received financial support from the US Department of Defense. Over 900 television titles had received Pentagon backing since 2005. The CIA has had an entertainment liaison office in Hollywood since 1996. Hollywood stars were wheeled out to blast Trump, but now the emphasis has changed. It‘s Russia that’s in the line of fire. Morgan Freeman has been chosen by the hawks as the new ‘superhero’ to save America from a threat that doesn’t exist.
It’s by far and away the worst role he‘s ever played.
_____
Neil Clark is a journalist, writer, broadcaster and blogger. He has written for many newspapers and magazines in the UK and other countries including The Guardian, Morning Star, Daily and Sunday Express, Mail on Sunday, Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, New Statesman, The Spectator, The Week, and The American Conservative. He is a regular pundit on RT and has also appeared on BBC TV and radio, Sky News, Press TV and the Voice of Russia. He is the co-founder of the Campaign For Public Ownership @PublicOwnership. His award winning blog can be found at http://www.neilclark66.blogspot.com. He tweets on politics and world affairs @NeilClark66
Morgan Freeman’s ‘War with Russia’ video shouldn’t be taken seriously – Kremlin
Published time: 20 Sep, 2017
https://www.rt.com/news/403961-putin-fr ... ussia-war/
by seemslikeadream » Sun Sep 24, 2017 5:46 pm
WND TV: Tucker Carlson shuts down liberal on Russia
http://www.wnd.com/wnd_video/tucker-car ... on-russia/
Hollywood Liberal Reiner Declares 'War' on Russia
https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/rob-r ... id/815026/
WATCH: Rob Reiner smacks down Tucker Carlson for belittling importance of Russia’s election meddling
Sarah K. Burris SARAH K. BURRIS
21 SEP 2017 AT 21:38 ET
Filmmaker Rob Reiner handed it to Tucker Carlson Thursday when the Fox News host tried to belittle the importance of Russia’s invasion in the U.S. election.
Carlson began by wondering why Reiner wasn’t demanding Trump send in the F-15 fighters to bomb St. Petersburg if his new ad says “we’re at war.” Reiner tried to explain that it’s a cyber war, which Carlson refuted.
“If you watch the entire video, it talks about cyberwarfare” Reiner explained. “It talks about how he was able to use the internet and cyber tools to attack the U.S. democracy, which is what they did.”
Carlson told Reiner that he should clarify in the video “we’re not really at war,” dismissing the hacking of a democracy as a serious issue.
Reiner again encouraged Carlson to watch the full video where it explains what the cyberwar was about and how it was conducted according to intelligence. He named off the various ways we now know the Russians, or people connected to Russia, were using the internet to help attack Hillary Clinton and boost Donald Trump. He admitted that we’re accustomed to propaganda being used in elections, what is unique in this situation was the use of propaganda to specifically target and advertise to those in swing states on Facebook.
Carlson tried to accuse Reiner of colluding with far-right warmongers who’ve supported full on violent wars in the past and wondered why he would align himself with these types of people as a liberal. Reiner explained very simply that people on both sides of the political aisle believe Russia invaded the U.S. when it sought to impact American democracy.
“We’re not advocating going to war, or going to a traditional war,” Reiner said.
“Well, you should say that,” Carlson demanded.
“But we’re already in a cyber war with them,” Reiner countered. “People want to turn their heads at that and it’s at their own peril. The point I’d like to make, and this is really important for people to understand because this doesn’t have anything to do with Donald Trump. Trust me, Donald Trump, whatever happens to him, is going to happen to him, I mean there are already investigations. Muller is going to find what he finds. The House and Senate have their own investigations. They’ll find whatever they find. But beyond that, we’ve been invaded in a certain way and the thing that has been so upsetting to me, I don’t know how old you are Tucker, but when I was young we had to hide under a desk because we were worried we were going to get attacked by a nuclear bomb.
He went on to say that when the country has been attacked in the past, whether 9/11 or Pearl Harbor, “we’ve come together as a country to defend ourselves against foreign enemies.” America isn’t doing that here for the first time in our history. That is a major reason why it is important to him that people see the video.
Carlson said that Hollywood doesn’t care about China hacking the US websites and government agencies and that they build movies with the Chinese censors in mind. Reiner countered that the difference is that we’ve done the same to China. Russia stepped into influence an election and that was “game over.”
“It’s not about hacking into computers and stealing information, it’s about using that information and weaponizing it in some way,” Reiner explained. He went on to say he wants people to encourage policymakers to put things in place so that we can protect ourselves as a country.
http://www.rawstory.com/2017/09/watch-r ... -meddling/
by DrEvil » Sun Sep 24, 2017 6:04 pm
The old actor then accuses the evil ‘former KGB spy’ (boo and hiss in the front row, please) of “secretly using cyber warfare to attack democracies around the world” - and using social media to “spread propaganda and false information,” to convince people in “democratic societies” to “distrust their media, their political processes, even their neighbours.”
The focus of applied methods of conflict has altered in the direction of the broad use of political, economic, informational, humanitarian, and other nonmilitary measures — applied in coordination with the protest potential of the population.
by seemslikeadream » Sun Sep 24, 2017 6:08 pm
by conniption » Sun Sep 24, 2017 6:35 pm
by seemslikeadream » Sun Sep 24, 2017 6:38 pm
Carlson is the founder of The Daily Caller, which is a constant source of sexism, conspiracy theories, climate misinformation, and smears based on dubious sources like Holocaust deniers.
He is the current co-host of Fox & Friends on the weekend. He previously hosted programs at CNN, MSNBC, and PBS. While at Fox, Carlson has also made several guest appearances on the radio show of conspiracy theorist and 9/11 truther movement leader Alex Jones.
Here are some the lowlights of Carlson’s media career:
Carlson On Hillary Clinton: There's “Something About Her That Feels Castrating.” Carlson said there was “just something” about Hillary Clinton that “feels castrating, overbearing, and scary.”
Carlson: When Hillary Clinton “Comes On Television, I Involuntarily Cross My Legs.” Carlson said that whenever Hillary Clinton “comes on television, I involuntarily cross my legs.” He also said, “She scares me. I cross my legs every time she talks.”
Carlson: Reporting Statutory Rape Is “Whiny.” Carlson described a student who had reported statutory rape by a teacher as “whiny.”
Carlson On Whether “All Legal Immigration” Should Be Stopped: “Absolutely.” Carlson responded “absolutely” when questioned about whether “all legal immigration” should be stopped.
Carlson: “Real Poor People Don’t Eat Out Of Dumpsters.” Carlson said that “real poor people don’t eat out of dumpsters” and that those who do have no “dignity.”
Carlson Called Michelle Obama “A Nasty, Bitter Partisan.” Discussing her speech at the 2016 Democratic National Convention, Carlson said first lady Michelle Obama was “a nasty, bitter partisan.”
Carlson: Atheism Leads To “Killing A Ton Of People.” Carlson said that not believing in a power higher than the government would lead to “killing a ton of people.”
Carlson Called For Increasing The Stigma Of Some Mental Health Conditions. After the mass shooting at the Washington Navy Yard, Carlson argued that “we need to increase the stigma” of some mental health conditions.
Carlson Dismissed Critical Coverage Of Trump’s Pro-Assault Comments: “Nobody Is Actually Shocked By This.” Discussing the audio of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump saying of women, “Grab them by the pussy,” Carlson said, “Nobody is actually shocked by this and everyone is pretending to be.” He added that the media is manufacturing outrage over the remarks.
Carlson Accused Obama Of Pushing “Nazi” Racial Politics, Promoted Gun Confiscation Conspiracy. Carlson told conspiracy theorist Alex Jones that President Obama was engaging in “Nazi stuff” by using ethnic politics. He also promoted the conspiracy theory that Obama wants to confiscate all firearms and put people “in jail for even having them.”
Carlson: NAACP Is “An Absurd Fringe Group” That Is “Bankrupt Literally And Morally.” Carlson described the NAACP, a leading civil rights organization, as “an absurd fringe group” that is “bankrupt literally and morally.”
Carlson: Plans For Mosque In Lower Manhattan Were “Forc[ing] The Families Of Victims Of 9/11 To Have To Relive This All.” Carlson said that the proposal to build a mosque in lower Manhattan (the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque”) was “forc[ing] the families of victims of 9/11 to have to relive this all.”
Carlson: Gender Neutral Bathrooms Are “Disgusting.” Carlson said having gender neutral bathrooms at the 2016 Democratic National Convention was “disgusting.”
Carlson Lied, Said Obama Has Called Police Racists “Again And Again.” Carlson falsely claimed that President Obama has called police racists “again and again” and he said that the president created an environment where police being attacked “is absolutely inevitable.”
Carlson: Transgender Equality Is A “Solution In Search Of A Problem.” Carlson said attempts to secure transgender equality were “a solution in search of a problem,” and that Democrats were “on another planet” due to “obsessions over transgender bathrooms.” Carlson also argued that extending Title IX protections to transgender people is “frivolous,” adding, “Are there millions or thousands or even hundreds of transgender students facing discrimination in schools? No.”
https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2016/ ... nts/214277
How Anti-Abortion Extremists Are Using Tucker Carlson’s Show To Cultivate The Far Right
http://www.nationalmemo.com/anti-aborti ... far-right/
Tucker Carlson is a primetime FOX News anchor and a co-founder of the conservative news website The Daily Caller. Carlson was a senior fellow with the Koch-founded and -funded Cato Institute.[1]
Ties to the American Legislative Exchange Council
Carlson spoke at a plenary session of the 38th Annual Meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in New Orleans, Louisiana, on August 5th, 2011, along with David L. Dieter, Head of Government and External Affairs at Takeda Pharmaceuticals, an ALEC member corporation.[1] He also received ALEC's "Warren Brookes Award for Excellence in Journalism" at the States and Nation Policy Summit in Washington, D.C. on December 3, 2009.[2]
About ALEC
ALEC is a corporate bill mill. It is not just a lobby or a front group; it is much more powerful than that. Through ALEC, corporations hand state legislators their wishlists to benefit their bottom line. Corporations fund almost all of ALEC's operations. They pay for a seat on ALEC task forces where corporate lobbyists and special interest reps vote with elected officials to approve “model” bills. Learn more at the Center for Media and Democracy's ALECexposed.org, and check out breaking news on our PRWatch.org site.
Additional PRWatch resource: Nonpartisan "Truthtelling" at ALEC
Bomb, bomb Iran
On 1 February 2012, Carlson appeared on Fox News' Think Progress program and stated that the United States had the responsibility to attack Iran. Carlson stated:
I think we are the only country with the moral authority [...] sufficient to do that. [The U.S. is] the only country that doesn’t seek hegemony in the world. I do think, I’m sure I’m the lone voice in saying this, that Iran deserves to be annihilated. I think they’re lunatics. I think they’re evil.[3]
Glenn Greenwald, the constitutional lawyer, commented:
Tucker Carlson has long been a vocal, public advocate of the justness of American wars, but, at age 42, he is yet to enlist to fight any of them. Last night on Fox News, he unleashed what appeared to be one of the more vile comments heard in quite some time, as he publicly opined that "Iran deserves to be annihilated"[4]
Tucker's Scooter Libby "Secret"
Carlson "has made quite a fuss about the Libby case from the get-go, trashing Patrick Fitzgerald at every possible opportunity," ReddHedd of Firedoglake Blog wrote in February 2006.[5]
"But Tucker has a secret," ReddHedd wrote: Tucker's father is Ambassador Richard Carlson, Vice Chairman of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, and an Advisory Board Member of the Libby Legal Defense Trust[6].
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Tucker_Carlson
by conniption » Sun Sep 24, 2017 6:56 pm
seemslikeadream » Sun Sep 24, 2017 3:38 pm wrote:Your friend Tucker...well that explains everything...
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