Russia Reportedly Bought Thousands of Facebook Ads Sought To Stress Racial Divisions (thehill.com) 292
According to The Washington Post, Russia government actors bought Facebook advertisements during the 2016 election cycle that sought to exploit and divide based on hot-button racial issues. Some of the ads promoted civil rights groups such as Black Lives Matter, while others criticized them in an effort to sow division. The Hill reports: Facebook is handing over some 3,000 ads to congressional investigators as part of probes into the Kremlin's alleged effort to influence the outcome of last year's presidential election. Other ads allegedly highlighted Hillary Clinton's support among Muslim women and promoted anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant messages. Facebook didn't comment on the story, but did refer to a statement earlier this month from its chief privacy officer, Alex Stamos: "Rather, the ads and accounts appeared to focus on amplifying divisive social and political messages across the idealogical spectrum -- touching on topics from LGBT matters to race issues to immigration to gun rights."
So (Score:3, Interesting)
Facebook is a willing participant in election fraud?
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Guardian proudly sponsors a campaign for foreigners to interfere in the 2004 election [theguardian.com]
Translation: Think of us first, and the needs
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Yeah, fuck off Trump, Brexit is nothing to do with you. Stop trying to influence our votes with fake promises of golden trade deals that we know will turn to shit the moment we fall for your trap...
Oh, wait... Fuck.
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Re:So (Score:4, Insightful)
The proper response is an intelligent, informed electorate.
The voter registration movements work against that. If someone can't figure out the how, and won't put the effort into registering on their own, there's no chance the'll expend the effort to make an informed choice. All those voter registration drives are simply attempts to get irrational sycophants to vote.
Re: So (Score:2)
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KGB boss: Dmitry, SEO is not a skill, why you apply to KGB? You dumb son of potato, I only laugh. Go back to Siberia, come back after learn real programming.
Dmitry: CYKA BLYAT I SHOW YOU HOLD MY VODKA!
*two weeks later*
CNN: "We project Trump will win the state of Michigan"
KGB boss: Hyello everybody, this is our new department manager Dmitry.
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Nope, the Washington post is a willing participant in fraud. Note the sneaky bit in the story, c'mon people, stop and think. Facebook delivers individual content to individual people, how that content is filtered and delivered is the Facebook system. So pay attention to that, so how does Facebook deliver ads, individually, not collectively. Each individual gets served an ad, so thousands of ads, get it, see, tricky fraudulent fuckers. They spend one hundred thousand dollars to sell some crap related to that
No, that would be rags like HuffPo and Salon... (Score:3, Insightful)
...who have used race baiting [i.redd.it] against working whites in the same way white supremacists attack black and latinos. It's an inversion of LBJ's famous observation about poor southern whites:
Only instead of getting poor whites to resent minorities who have never done a thing to them, it's getting poor minorities to resent white people who have never done anything to them. And all the while, the fine folks at COINTELPRO [wikipedia.org] are laughing their asses off as people ignore the deep state crony capitalists hiding behind the curtain.
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...who have used race baiting against working whites in the same way white supremacists attack black and latinos. It's an inversion of LBJ's famous observation about poor southern whites:
"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."
Only instead of getting poor whites to resent minorities who have never done a thing to them, it's getting poor minorities to resent white people who have never done anything to them. And all the while, the fine folks at COINTELPRO are laughing their asses off as people ignore the deep state crony capitalists hiding behind the curtain.
Alright, who are you and what have you done with the Uberbah that I've argued with on /. countless times over the years!? LOL!
Damn man, I find myself agreeing with your posts a lot lately! Well said. It's all about 'divide & conquer' using propaganda and disinformation while simultaneously dumbing-down the population so they are unable to think critically or possess any knowledge of history. Evil Kabuki theater.
Strat
Haven't they been doing this stuff forever? (Score:3)
Propaganda (Score:4, Insightful)
I grew up with these types of stories since the cold wars days. But were told that it was all cia propaganda and that they would never do anything like that.
Yes, propaganda is a very real part of everyday life, both state-sponsored and corporate-sponsored, throughout the developed world. Many newspaper articles are heavily influenced by it even when someone writing a story doesn't realize it, because fundamentally reporters have very little time to spend on each story. Most of this propaganda has political objectives.
That doesn't make it okay. It is something that causes harm and that there should be both protection from and defenses for. A foreign government that uses propaganda to destabilize a country should be treated as a kind of attack and an appropriate proportional response (although it may be of a different kind) should be employed until you are able to negotiate a de-escalation. Here, the evidence appears to show that there have been propaganda and electronic attacks on the United States and it should respond intelligently.
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Two questions (Score:2)
Remember when Obama tried to alter the result of the Brexit vote? What retaliation should Britain be pursuing for that blatant foreign meddling?
Q1: How does Facebook know with any certainty that these are Russian *government* actors. The implication being that the Russian government acted with intent to sow dissent during our elections.
How does Facebook know that these are not separate, individual Russian citizens without ties to the Russian government?
If one actor took out ads highlighting both sides of an issue, then yes... that would be intent to sow dissent.
But if the different sides were taken by different actors, a simpler explanation is that
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...and ridiculous beliefs like this are why the Right will be in power for the next 50 years. It's not the facts of the situation, it's the fact that to you, they are The Other. And you'd rather do anything than tolerate The Other. [slatestarcodex.com]
The conservatives I know have a realistic understanding of human nature (i.e., it is fundamentally flawed) and set expectations accordingly; i.e., there will never be a Utopia.
It is the leftists who believe that human nature is basically good, and that people do bad things b
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...and ridiculous beliefs like this are why the Right will be in power for the next 50 years. It's not the facts of the situation, it's the fact that to you, they are The Other. And you'd rather do anything than tolerate The Other. [slatestarcodex.com]
The conservatives I know have a realistic understanding of human nature (i.e., it is fundamentally flawed) and set expectations accordingly; i.e., there will never be a Utopia.
It is the leftists who believe that human nature is basically good, and that people do bad things because of external forces (e.g., their living conditions); Therefore the goal of arranging those external forces so they no longer cause people to do bad things becomes the greatest moral imperative.
So, on one hand we have people who believe that Utopia is impossible, and on the other we have people who believe that creating Utopia is the highest (perhaps only) moral priority. The first group believes the second group is deluded in their belief that Utopia is possible; the second group believes the first group is immoral for opposing their efforts to create one at any cost.
Hitler very successfully made the very same arguments. He even quoted Darwin. IMO it all comes down to whether or not humans can rise above the fundamental urges that lead to tribal manifestations of these urges. A majority of the German population fell under this spell and we know it lead to WW11. It seems that America right now is undergoing the very same shift to an idiotic pseudo Darwin concept of survival of the meanest bastards, this is happening on a financial basis as well as a political one.
Tsar Pu
Re:Haven't they been doing this stuff forever? (Score:5, Insightful)
Too bad you have that 100% backwards. Conservatives believe in a utopia in which charity covers all the needs of the needy, while Liberals believe that you have to legislate helping them, because history has shown that the conservatives (who are holding all the money) will not actually spend enough of their money on charity to make a noticeable difference unless forced. That's why the natural order is to keep cycling back to torches and pitchforks. Liberals know that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance, while conservatives think it's a buck-oh-five.
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history has shown that the conservatives (who are holding all the money)
If you're going to use suck a laughably counter-factual meme as a foundational part of your thesis, be prepared to be laughed at.
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history has shown that the conservatives (who are holding all the money)
If you're going to use suck a laughably counter-factual meme as a foundational part of your thesis, be prepared to be laughed at.
Suck my balls, you ignoranus. [huffingtonpost.com] You literally could not be more wrong. I notice also that you failed to provide a statistic, which makes sense, since you fail at every other conversational gambit as well.
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It's much simpler than that. Conservatives like the way things are, because even if they are unfair it benefits them or suits their "traditional" beliefs. The left finds that they can't get married or get an abortion, or at least cares enough that someone else can't, and see that it's because of some fairy tale or tradition or simple bigotry and wants to change it.
I'm not sure where you get the "at any cost" bit from.
Re:Haven't they been doing this stuff forever? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, that's bullshit. The left doesn't believe in "Utopia". Why the fuck do you think they're supposedly the party of "evil" laws and regulations the right likes to demonize? It's the CONSERVATIVES who think we need less regulation. They're the ones who want to remove environmental protections. They're the ones that want to remove business regulations. They're the ones who want to remove the FDA. They're the ones that want to remove consumer protections. So on and so forth.
The CONSERVATIVES are the ones who believe in this ridiculous notion of Utopia. We'd all be happy if we just got rid of all these pesky rules and regulations! That's utter bullshit.
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Thank you, my friend, for saying it a lot better than I would have.
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So, on one hand we have people who believe that Utopia is impossible, and on the other we have people who believe that creating Utopia is the highest (perhaps only) moral priority. The first group believes the second group is deluded in their belief that Utopia is possible; the second group believes the first group is immoral for opposing their efforts to create one at any cost.
Last time I checked, conservatives (at least those in Congress and in the WH) believed that a health care system that's twice as expensive per capita as every other civilised country's and failed to insure a large group of people was the best thing you can have, and they believed that increased defense spending and further tax cuts for the rich, starting from a historically low base, would lower the national debt.
So who is into Utopias here?
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Nice straw man argument you have there. Better make sure it doesn't get wet and soggy.
Re: Haven't they been doing this stuff forever? (Score:2, Insightful)
Alas, "proudly ignorant" seems to describe both sides of contemporary American political discourse.
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I thought 'The American Conservative' ( http://www.theamericanconserva... [theamerica...vative.com] ) was started just because they who called themselves paleoconservatives felt they were being squeezed out of the discourse. So together with some libertarians I consider them well informed , but unfortunately in the current context , fringe.
This is not what was intially reported (Score:5, Interesting)
The ads were initially reported to be pro Trump. It seems Facebook itself reported false information to seed decent.
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Err.. no, they weren't [slashdot.org]. The initial report was [washingtonpost.com]:
If you read that as "pro-Trump", that's on you. Don't go crying "false information".
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I don't know if FB reported false information, as much as the news media presumed that anything funded by Russia must be pro-Trump. Most news organizations are searching with a microscope for anything tying Russia to Trump, and they tend to get a bit giddy when they think something has been found. According to the article, there isn't much of a smoking gun here, and in fact there may not have been anything illegal as far as the "foreign nationals can't influence elections" laws. In the past these laws we
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Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not saying it was the only that got Trump elected, I'm just saying he wouldn't have been without it. Hell, he wouldn't have made it through the primaries.
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Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
This only works as propaganda to the extent that people already believe it enough to have it reinforce their own perceptions.
If this is a Russian "campaign", it's only a campaign to exploit the gap between the false narrative official discourse and the everyday reality of most Americans. The false narrative of official discourse is that Americans are racist -- uniformly biased against non-whites -- and the problems of African Americans are almost exclusively the result of this racism and not of any widespread social problems they contribute to.
The every day reality is that most Americans aren't uniformly racist against all races. If they were, millions of marginally literate, marginally English capable Mexicans wouldn't have had fantastic success in getting hired for jobs, millions of South Asians couldn't have been imported into Corporate American to staff IT departments, and people like Satya Nadella couldn't wind up in charge of one of the largest corporations in America and the world. The level of active "globalism" in the US just wouldn't work if the people making decisions were racist and the employees they had to work with were racist.
Americans do hold racial biases towards African Americans specifically, but this is largely not the cause it's given credit for, but an effect of their everyday interactions in most cities with the large plurality of poor and criminally inclined African Americans. And you can't talk about that reality without blaming white racism for it and freeing African Americans from most all responsibility for it.
As long as we continue to push the phony narrative of "racism" rather than "Americans don't like many African Americans", the propaganda will work. Once we acknowledge that white Americans are generally racially tolerant EXCEPT for African Americans, we will start to acknowledge the specific problems African Americans have (many of which are structural but not racist) and possibly get around to helping them. Once that happens, then the propaganda of racism won't really work.
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The tough hombres & rapists comments come to mind
Surely you're not yet another person who thinks that "MS-13" and "rapist" are races?
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We need some guts and a law about political ads (Score:3, Insightful)
Net media must stop either micro-targeted ads (not likely for FB or Google) or political ads (since micro-targeted political ads are death to society). It only took big data science and social media to deliver the most hideous election in U.S. history and assist the ascendancy of white supremacism in what had been a nation of immigrants.
All FB would have to do is hire human beings to turn down political ads, and the guts to pass up the money. Though broadcast TV takes the opposite path, at least TV does not intentionally try to fool the watcher into thinking everybody on that channel sees the same ads. The next step is to get money out of elections (every candidate gets the same budget for ads and buying supporters) and out of politics (flat dead impossible unless someone other than politicians makes the law).
Re: We need some guts and a law about political ad (Score:2)
Great idea, Li Feng! Then if we could just build some sort of "great internet firewall" to keep all the badthink out...
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It only took big data science and social media to deliver the most hideous election in U.S. history
Yeah, that and Facebook didn't cause Hillary to lose Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. You know what did? Ignoring the plight of real Americans who are really hurting. Telling them off and letting them know you absolutely refuse to represent their interests in the government. But continue smashing powerless people in the face with the whole "UR WHYTE SUPREMCST" thing. It feels good to speak trut
Re:We need some guts and a law about political ads (Score:5, Insightful)
The most successful trick Trump pulled during his campaign was convincing these people that he, a millionaire cosmopolitan and a 'globalist' in every sense of the word, would represent their interests, or that he cares about them in any sense. He doesn't. He's now been in office for 8 months and done very little, and his attempts are focused on giving out tax-breaks to the wealthiest segment of the US - his co-millionaires - at the cost of the very poorest.
This is the main problem currently faced by all western democracies: there's a segment of poorly educated poorly employed people who do not understand why their jobs are gone and won't be coming back except as automated factories, and these people will vote for anyone who tells them that he'll get their jobs back and make everything better. Put another way: the people most negatively affected by the current economic development are also the ones with the least understanding of it, making them easy targets to manipulate into voting against their own interests.
Hillary's main problem has always been that she's not really a charismatic figure in any way, nor is she a great speaker, put simply: she's way too boring and unenthusiastic. Trump isn't an orator either and seems to be running on a vocabulary of a 9 year-old, but what he has over Hillary is emotion: like any good salesman, he's able to deliver an enthusiastic pitch that gets people interested, it gets them listening. He's a superior showman and knows his crowd, but it doesn't make him a competent politician, that he's clearly not.
Impressive ultra efficient Russian propaganda (Score:5, Insightful)
Looks like a couple thousand dollars worth of foreign ads tipped the balance against a billion dollar campaign run by a powerful well-connected establishment.
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Given how close the election was, even small things might have changed the outcome.
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From TFA, fwiw: "According to Facebook, fraudulent accounts, which have now been closed, paid $100,000 for the ads." Still, point taken. Tip of the iceberg, though.
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... and I can't even get a 2% clickthrough rate on my adwords
Not all goals are created equal. Getting Americans to vote against their own interests is about as difficult as making teenagers depressed.
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Getting Americans to vote against their own interests
Putting the wildly corrupt Clintons back into the power they demanded so they could continue to enrich themselves selling access ... THAT would have been against Americans' own interests. Giving Hillary Clinton the power to nominate Supreme Court justices when she came right out and told us that she was going to use that power as a foil against a not-liking-her-agenda legislature that she knew wouldn't follow her demands ... THAT would have been voting against Americans' own interests.
$100,000? That is a thing now? (Score:4, Interesting)
Also, I'm somehow missing the connection to Russia in the article - it's once again presented as a certainty, but it is not explained how the authors managed to do the attribution to the Russian government. If this is considered a serious article in the US, I'm not surprised that "fake news" is a thing there. How about some critical thinking?
Really, guys, to the rest of the world this histeria is beyond awkward and facepalming. Trump is your creature, born out of the swamp that is the 2-party scam, not some foreign plant. Reform your political system, and these things won't happen. Until you do so, according to the article everybody who has $100,000 to burn will be able to elect your president for you...
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Unfortunately you're comment will be buried under load of rubbish, evil Russian comments / It's Putin's fault, because it just is not fun otherwise.
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$100,000? Like, really? The Clinton+Trump campaigns have spent together over $200,000,000 [bloomberg.com] on their campaigns. Either the Russians are absolute geniuses and light years ahead of everybody else when it comes to effective political ads, or this is just another inflated sensationalist article trying to get views for WaPo using a hot topic.
You really haven't been paying attention, have you? Yes, the Russians are well ahead of the curve. They've been doing this for a LONG time. Our allies warned us that they've been doing for a long time. They warned us that we were going to be targeted. Putin isn't fucking stupid. He caught on to how powerful (and cheap) using social media was as a tool. You get something to go viral even just once, and it's already paid back a thousand fold.
And that's what happened. Not just here, but also in Europe. More to
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You really haven't been paying attention, have you? Yes, the Russians are well ahead of the curve. They've been doing this for a LONG time. Our allies warned us that they've been doing for a long time. They warned us that we were going to be targeted. Putin isn't fucking stupid. He caught on to how powerful (and cheap) using social media was as a tool. You get something to go viral even just once, and it's already paid back a thousand fold.
And that's what happened. Not just here, but also in Europe. More to the point, it was extremely successful.
I've been paying attention for a long time now, and what I see is the same old thing - using Russia as a boogeyman. Before, it was the USSR's massive tank formations, submarines and nuclear weapons which everybody had to fear. Now, since their tank formations are just an outdated shadow of their former glory, their submarine fleet is tiny compared to the US' one, and the nuclear weapons are regulated by treaties, we need to fear something else they're oh-so-good at, right?
And where exactly in Europe have t
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$100k spend unethically can have a much bigger impact than $100k spent ethically (not that either Trump or Clinton are ethical people, but they have to deal with the consequences of unethical behavior being discovered and blamed on them, unlike Russia).
Also, the election just happened to be extremely close, which is how a small push to one side could put them over the edge.
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Putin: "All your base are belong to us" (Score:2)
I'm starting to think Putin probably dances to that classic youtube sensation every night before bed. His government spy agencies have manipulated the US population through our permeation with big tech beyond what I would have thought possible a couple of years ago.
Zapad (Score:2)
Is this news? Or is having a week-long war game named "Zapad" or "West" news?
So? (Score:2)
Does it matter now for what purpose whoever buys ads?
Russian Trolls: Put up your keyboards! (Score:2)
Anyone else speculating that the downtime was a Russian hacker response to the nasty topic?
Would the paid Russian trolls please raise their keyboards so we can take a count?
Actually I had a substantive response when I discovered the down-state of Slashdot. Let me see if I can recover those notes...
[...] I just stopped by [this other system] because Slashdot is down and I was looking for possible explanations. Now I'm wondering if the invalid certificate might have been part of an attack that has mostly shut
Re:Treason (Score:5, Interesting)
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Timeline of Treason (Score:4, Informative)
Before the election
Dec. 10, 2015
Lt. Gen Michael Flynn is part of a panel discussion in Moscow for the 10th anniversary of government-backed Russia Today, for which he receives payment (The Washington Post, Aug. 15, 2016). Officials notice an increase in communication between Flynn and the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak, following the Russia Today event (CNN, May 19, 2017).
Late 2015
British intelligence agencies detect suspicious interactions between Russia and Trump aides that they pass on to American intelligence agencies (The Guardian, April 13, 2017).
March 19, 2016
Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta is sent an email that encourages him to change his email password, likely precipitating the hack of his account (CBS News, Oct. 28, 2016).
March 21
During an interview with The Post, Trump lists Carter Page as part of his foreign policy team. Page had been recommended by a son-in-law of President Richard Nixon, New York Republican Party Chairman Ed Cox (WP, March 21, 2016).
March 28
Political veteran Paul Manafort is hired to help the Trump campaign manage the delegate process for the Republican National Convention. He is recommended by Trump confidante Roger Stone (New York Times, March 28, 2016). Before joining the campaign, Manafort lobbied on behalf of Oleg Deripaska, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. That deal followed a memo from Manafort in which he offered a plan that could "greatly benefit the Putin Government." His relationship with Deripaska ended in 2009 (Associated Press, March 22, 2017). Manafort also worked on behalf of the Russia-friendly Party of Regions in Ukraine, helping guide the party's leader, Viktor Yanukovych, to the country's presidency. Yanukovych would later be ousted. (WP, Aug. 19, 2016)
April 27
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) may have met with Kislyak at a reception at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington before a foreign-policy speech given by Trump (CNN, May 31, 2017).
June
At a closed-door meeting of foreign policy experts and the prime minister of India, Page praises Putin effusively (WP, Aug. 5, 2016).
June 9
Donald Trump, Jr., Manafort and son-in-law Jared Kushner meet at Trump Tower with a Kremlin-connected attorney named Natalia Veselnitskaya. Veselnitskaya's efforts to reverse a law passed in 2012 sanctioning Russians suspected of human rights violations at some point drew the attention of the FBI. The meeting was not initially reported to the government by Kushner as required when he took a position with the administration (Times, July 8, 2017). After the meeting was originally reported, Trump, Jr. admitted that the pretext for the conversation was that he believed Veselnitskaya to have information incriminating Hillary Clinton (Times, July 9, 2017).
June 15
A hacker calling himself "Guccifer 2.0" releases the Democratic National Committee's research file on Donald Trump (Gawker, June 15, 2016). News reports already link the stolen data to Russian hackers (WP, June 14, 2016).
July
At some point this month, the FBI begins investigating possible links between the Russian government and Trump's campaign (Wired, March 20, 2017).
July 7
Page travels to Moscow to give a lecture (NYT, April 19, 2017). The Trump campaign approved the trip (USA Today, March 7, 2017). This trip was likely the catalyst for the FBI's request for a secret surveillance warrant to track Pageâs communications (WP, May 25, 2017).
July 11 or 12
Trump campaign staffers intervene with the committee developing the Republican Party's national security platform to remove language call arming Ukraine against Russian aggression. (July 18, 2016).
July 18
At an event hosted by the Heritage Foundation as part of the Republican National Convention, Sessions and Kislyak have a brief conversation (WP, March 2, 2017).
Flynn delivers a speech at the Republican convention, joining in the crowd's "Lock her up!" chant. "If I, a guy who knows this business, if I
Re:Timeline of Treason (Score:4, Insightful)
You do realize that the point of the actual linked article is that the Russians objective is to sow disconnect and divide Americans. Then you go on to post a bunch of loosely connected and out of context examples to help feed a very partisan and divisive narrative. Currently those on the Left are actually doing exactly what the Russians want them to do. They're creating disconnect and trying to destroy American unity and faith in our democratic process. The left, unknowingly, are the ones colluding and doing the work the Russians want done. Try some introspection and realize you've been played and are part of the problem dividing us and weakening us as a nation.
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The left is standing up to Russia while the right wing embraces Russia's attack on our country.
The right is mostly saying wtf are you talking about to the left. While the left is playing right in to the goal to sow division. The "standing up" is actually doing Putin's bidding. The irony is completely missed by ivory tower moral crusaders.
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Remember when Mitt Romney sai Russia was the biggest geopolitical threat to the US? Remember how he was mocked mercilessly for his views?
President Barack Obama, among others, mocked the Republican candidate: “The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back, because the cold war’s been over for 20 years”.
Vice President Joe Biden opined that Romney belonged to “a small group of Cold War holdovers.”
John Kerry said “Mitt Romney talks like he’s only seen R
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The left stands for nothing. Literally.
lol. That's one of the most pathetic comebacks I've ever seen. Well done you.
Go and crawl back up Trump/Dear Leader Putin's arsehole where you belong.
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As someone on the right who agrees with you, I'm wondering if you're not falling into the same trap they want us all to drop into. Look at the huge number of ACs here and all most of them are doing is partisan name calling. I, for one, will continue to ignore the ACs.
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Then you go on to post a bunch of loosely connected and out of context examples to help feed a very partisan and divisive narrative.
You say that like it's a bad thing.
Dividing the nation along race, gender, sexual orientation, or religion is to promote irrational behavior. Dividing a nation along political lines... well that's what parties are for. Generating an alternative narrative is their function, and it's not irrational as long as you stick to facts.
That these are selected facts goes without saying. You are completely free to construct a contradictory narrative from other facts, if you have them.
If I point out there's smoke pou
Re:Timeline of Treason (Score:4, Insightful)
Nice summary of the unthinkable collusion that has been going on between the Trump team and Putin's Russia.
But I'm afraid the far-right (alt-right?) Republican camp has been padded so thoroughly against investigative journalism (fake news) and real facts (with -alternative facts-) that all of this evidence of collusion and treason will simply bounce right off them. It's amazing and scary thoroughly this group of people has been shielded from reason. It seems practically like brainwashing.
All it takes is propaganda and a "great", charismatic leader that talks loudly.
Now everybody should understand how Nazi Germany could happen.
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The NY Times described it thusly: "Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation Amid Russian Uranium Deal"
"Whether the donations played any role in the approval of the uranium deal is unknown. But the episode underscores the special ethical challenges presented by the Clinton Foundation, headed by a former president who relied heavily on foreign cash to accumulate $250 million in assets even as his wife helped steer American foreign policy as secretary of state, presiding over decisions with the potential to benefit t
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Just as I suspected, I laid out the evidence of treason right in front of you and you have simply chosen to ignore it.
June 9
Donald Trump, Jr., Manafort and son-in-law Jared Kushner meet at Trump Tower with a Kremlin-connected attorney named Natalia Veselnitskaya. Veselnitskaya's efforts to reverse a law passed in 2012 sanctioning Russians suspected of human rights violations at some point drew the attention of the FBI. The meeting was not initially reported to the government by Kushner as required when he t
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Again, but from someplace credible.
What, like the mouth of trump?
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You can tell which are the trolls because they never admit to the possibility of Russian interference.
Here's my problem. Who gives a shit? Of course they tried to influence it. Just like America and everywhere else tries to influence the election of other countries to get the best situation for them. It's nothing new apart from Trump whining and crying about it now it's started to work against him. Mother fucker needs to grow up and, well I would say get on with the job but has he actually started? As far as I can tell it's all golf and tweets.
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Re:Timeline of Treason (Score:4, Informative)
Just turning up to meet the lawyer was illegal, whether they had any information or not. It doesn't matter what happened at the meeting or afterwards - the very act of trying to get the information instead of reporting the offer is illegal. That's it. That's the only piece the wall of text needed to include, and it's damning.
I don't know how you see a Russian-government paid lawyer trying to give information on an opponent in an election as not a foreign country intervening in said election.
Re: (Score:2)
Just turning up to meet the lawyer was illegal, whether they had any information or not. It doesn't matter what happened at the meeting or afterwards - the very act of trying to get the information instead of reporting the offer is illegal. That's it. That's the only piece the wall of text needed to include, and it's damning.
I don't know how you see a Russian-government paid lawyer trying to give information on an opponent in an election as not a foreign country intervening in said election.
Can you please cite what law that breaks?
And one more question...had it been an American citizen would it have been legal? I'm asking because campaigns put a lot of effort into digging up dirt, so I'm wondering why it matters what the source of that dirt is.
FWIW, I'm a Cold War vet, I'm very much against any Russian interference. And let's remember that their goal is to divide us, and it appears to be working.
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Can you please cite what law that breaks?
Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprison
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Have you ever heard of a country named "Ukraine"? Off down the rabbit hole you go...
Re: "According to the Washington Post." (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Pedant here. It's spelled "successky".
Re: "According to the Washington Post." (Score:2)
Am American journalist visiting Ukraine just after the war - in the interstitial period of peace & cooperation between WW2 and the Cold War - described that land as "the Texas of Russia".
Something to think about.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Did they buy the adds (Score:2)
Thank you, Dr Pedant, for your learned and enlightening commentary.
Re: There are many Comrades here... (Score:2)
You're just sour 'cuz the rooskies were pushing the same social destabilization propaganda that running dog "progressives" like to push. Of course there is a small difference - the rooskie were trying to ruin someone else's country...
Re: (Score:2)
>7 digit user accusing 6 digit users of being shills
Re: (Score:2)
Yes. Anonymous Coward has been a member here forever.
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I'm not American. I'm looking in from the outside, and Trump's lip prints are all over Putin's dick.
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I'm not American. I'm looking in from the outside, and Trump's lip prints are all over Putin's dick.
No, angry-at-losing-despite-what-they-spent lefty news outlets have their prints all over the narrative you've chosen to explain why the wildly unlikable, robotically sociopathic, serially lying, fantasically corrupt Hillary Clinton lost an election despite a couple billion dollars having been spent to guarantee her coronation.
Re: (Score:2)
Angry? ROFL! I'm sitting up here north of a border far too long to fence, and our only worry is how many Americans are crossing over to seek asylum and decent health care.
I've got the popcorn out and I'm watching real Americans trying to fight back against the slobbering, racist morons of the alt-right. It's like a hockey game...I'm pulling for one side, but if it loses, I just shrug, open another beer, and wait to welcome more American friends into the greatest country in the world. Up here in the Grea
Re: (Score:2)
Please explain again how you live in "the greatest democracy in the world"?
Yes, you DO need an explanation, since you're deliberately ignorant on the matter. We don't live in a Democracy (thank you, founding fathers and the brilliant constitution they wrote). That works fine for town councils and garden clubs. We, instead, live in a constitutional republic, made up of fifty separate states, with considerable power left to those states, on purpose. We organize the national elections that impact the things those states do together around the fact that we don't want the smug, condes
Did you RTFA? (Score:5, Informative)
They were basically trying to get a whole bunch of folks who normally stay home to show up at the polls and without thinking about individual issues, vote their feelings. Worked too.
Re:Did you RTFA? (Score:5, Interesting)
TIME magazine in 1996 bragging about how we interfered in the Russian election. [i.redd.it]
Re: (Score:2)
And I've never encountered someone claiming to even support the US in those matters, even if it did advance US interests (in practice, all of those instances I've heard of backfired spectacularly, so that certainly doesn't help).
They only backfired spectacularly if you mistakenly attribute benevolence to the decision-makers. Sure, sometimes they fuck up, but most of those times, they knew what they were doing. Chaos is the goal, not a side effect or drawback.
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Re:Did you RTFA? (Score:4, Informative)
And they probably also tried to keep others home by saying Clinton already had won
No, that was Clinton herself, her very rich supporters, and the vast majority of academia and the press who all supporter and considered her the presumptive winner a year before the election. Clinton was so sure she had already won that she bought the house next door for the Secret Service to use (you know, we can't have them in HER house, those peasants), and couldn't even trouble herself to set foot ONCE in states like Wisconsin, because she assumed they were going to follow her royal edicts and vote for her as demanded. She and her party fell for their own lies about her appeal as a candidate, and got exactly what they deserved.
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Nyet nyet, tovarishch.
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The 1% is united. Now watch the roller coaster.
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“The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back becausethe Cold War’s been over for 20 years.”