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Russian Troll Factory Paid US Activists To Fund Protests During Election (theguardian.com)
bestweasel writes: The Guardian reports on another story about Russian meddling, but interestingly, this one comes from a respected Russian news source, the RBC. From the report: "Russian trolls posing as Americans made payments to genuine activists in the U.S. to help fund protest movements on socially divisive issues. On Tuesday, the newspaper RBC published a major investigation into the work of a so-called Russian 'troll factory' since 2015, including during the period of the U.S. election campaign, disclosures that are likely to put further spotlight on alleged Russian meddling in the election. RBC said it had identified 118 accounts or groups in Facebook, Instagram and Twitter that were linked to the troll factory, all of which had been blocked in August and September this year as part of the U.S. investigation into Russian electoral meddling. Perhaps the most alarming element of the article was the claim that employees of the troll factory had contacted about 100 real U.S.-based activists to help with the organization of protests and events. RBC claimed the activists were contacted by Facebook group administrators hiding their Russian origin and were offered financial help to pay for transport or printing costs. About $80,000 was spent during a two-year period, according to the report."
These are the 2 big stories regarding Russia today, and explains a lot of what went down, and the concentrated effort (and we do know it was a Clinton campaign effort thanks to wikileaks) to link Trump to Russia during the campaign in order to take the heat off herself.
http://thehill.com/policy/nati...
http://www.newsweek.com/james-...
It's Comey and the Obama DOJ that needs to be investigated for obstruction of justice.
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 PageÃs 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
Russia paying money to leftist and progressive groups in the US in order to create dissent and foment violence has been going on for more than half a century, as has their placement of operatives in Washington. That makes Democratic complaints about supposed Trump-Russia ties so ludicrous.
In other news, turns out there is more to the Russia-Clinton-Uranium story.
Here's the reasons (most to least):
1. Arrogance. She didn't think she had to campaign in the swing states. She actually believed in that "blue firewall" nonsense.
2. Trump's billions of dollars in free media coverage. Nobody in the press would denounce him because they were getting too many hits.
3. Russia. Russia. Russia. (insert Brady Bunch joke here). We had an ex-KGB pro with the full backing of his nation throw his hat in the ring for Trump.
4. Her health. She really was too old for this shit.
5. 30 years of bad press. Not just the emails. Everything. The Republicans knew she was going to run for president at some point. They have a multi-billion dollar media machine dedicated to their cause (Fox, Beitbart, all of Koch media, etc, etc). They've been hammering away at her since her husband left office.
6. TPP. Crap deal for everyone except the ruling class. In an election about jobs that hurt a lot.
7. Warmongering. In an effort to show everyone that a woman could be "strong" she went around the world pissing off our allies. A lot of folks figured she'd get us in a war. Meanwhile Trump was saying he wouldn't do that. Jokes on them, he's already got us on the brink of two new wars (to add to the 7 we're already fighting, look it up).
That's about it. Folks mostly agreed with her on everything except the TPP because most Americans are genuinely conservative. e.g. they don't want much change except maybe some more help from the government (for them only of course, not those lazy Blacks^X Welfare slobs). She's a right of center moderate. Exactly what most voters wanted.
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> (Clinton Uranium deal investigated by the FBI,
No. And shame on you for lying about it.
It was not the "clinton uranium deal" that was investigated. It was a bunch of russians doing kickbacks and money laundering, going as far back as 2004. As for Clinton's involvement, this is what the article says:
Russian nuclear officials trying to ingratiate themselves with the Clintons even though agents had gathered documents showing the transmission of millions of dollars from Russia’s nuclear industry to an American entity that had provided assistance to Bill Clinton’s foundation,
The millions went to a company that also worked with the clinton foundation, but note that the article explicitly avoids saying the millions were passed through to the foundation rather than being spent elsewhere, like aforementioned kickbacks to russians.
Furthermore, whenever the Uranium One deal is mentiond, everybody should remember this key fact: Russia was never given an export license, thus the uranium could never leave the US (and in fact barely any of it even left the ground because importing uranium from abroad is cheaper than mining it here). Here's the official statement from the Nuclear Regulatory Agency:
Neither Uranium One nor ARMZ holds an NRC export license, so no uranium produced at either facility may be exported.
> and Comey wrote the Hillary conclusion months before interviewing Hillary.)
Another half-truth that is a full lie. Interviewing her was basically a formality, especially if you believe the narrative that she's a master manipulator. The FBI investigation began no later than August the year before, 9 months before Comey began drafting the statement. All of the evidence gathered by then was already exculpatory that the writing was already on the wall.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/31/politics/comey-clinton-investigation/index.html
A person familiar with the matter pushed back on the notion that Comey had already reached a conclusion that affected the investigation.
The person said back in spring 2016, agents and Justice Department officials were talking about how the investigation would end and there was a belief that the evidence was going in a direction to not support bringing charges. This individual said by April 2016 the FBI had reviewed most of the evidence and didn't find evidence suggesting that Clinton had violated federal law. The person said the FBI wanted to interview her but didn't believe it was going to change the outcome.
The source also said Comey was not involved in the day-to-day steps of the investigation, so even if he reached a conclusion it wouldn't have affected the result of the investigation.
A second person familiar with the matter told CNN that Comey had not already made up his mind, and that it did not influence the investigation. The second source says the FBI had already reviewed much of the evidence by spring and it was becoming more clear that it was not likely to support bringing charges.
> If we can't abide the truth, then we're no different from the media talking heads.
You are different from the media talking heads. You are an unabashedly hyperpartisan liar, they are just poorly informed. You, on the other hand, know the whole truth because it takes exceptional discipline to write out all the parts that don't support your ideology of idiocy.
On June 3 last year, Donald Trump Jr. received an email offering him "official documents" containing what was described as "very high level and sensitive information" from Russia's chief prosecutor that would "incriminate" Hillary Clinton and which was "part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump." Trump Jr.'s response: "if it's what you say I love it especially later in the summer." Days later, the now famous meeting in Trump Tower followed.
What is plain as day from Trump Jr.'s own words is that he hoped - gleefully- to acquire dirt to use against Hillary Clinton by meeting with someone identified to him in the email chain as a "Russian government attorney." What is also plain as day - and should have been obvious to any sentient American, including Trump Jr., and fellow meeting attendees campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner - is that if the Russian government possessed such dirt, it either came from or could have come from the Russian intelligence services and was being dangled before them by the Russian government to advance Russian purposes.
To spell it out a bit more, interference of any sort by any foreign country in our elections is never acceptable. But Russia is not just any foreign country. It is a hostile power with a long history of spying on the United States and also attempting to influence our politics by both overt and covert means. Any derogatory material on Hillary Clinton which the Russians possessed might have been obtained by the dark arts of espionage: by blackmailing one or more of her associates, by planting moles in her entourage, and/or by intercepting her and her associates' telephone calls and (as actually happened) hacking their emails.
Citation Provided is an opinion article, but the section I've quoted is based directly on legitimate news articles I'm too lazy to dig up.
Sounds like you have no idea about Russian sources of news. Why don't you learn something before spewing ignorant russophibic drivel?
Russia has far more freedom of speech than say China and it has a few very respected news sources. The way it works in Russia, if say under 2% of population reads the source, Putin's administration usually does not consider it as a threat and leaves it alone. They did shut down or take over any big independent TV channels and newspapers.
And I pointed out that the same techniques were used more widely, as in the case of Jack Posobiec.
Each one of these disinfo attacks by itself seems small, but you have to remember there were multi-front attacks. I think the full scope of this is going to be a lot more clear when the Special Prosecutor presents his evidence to the grand jury. We shouldn't have to wait long now that Mueller has questioned or subpoenaed White House officials who are only once-removed from the President.
You are welcome on my lawn.
supporters point to a 2013 Stanford study that found that Michigan charter-school students are learning at a faster rate in reading and math than their public-school peers — seeing an additional two months of gains in each subject. Gains for Detroit charter-school students were greater, at three months.
The only downside it lists is in some mismanaged of expenses (as if Public schools had none of those) and the source for that is Detroit Free Press -- an unapologetically Communist (by their own admission) newspaper.
Care to list some other cherry-picked bull shit to show that the system which has consistently produced better education outcomes should somehow be denied to blacks? That's your evidence for "humane" treatment of blacks by the Democrats, right? I'd call you an idiot, but I don't want to be that generous. I doubt you don't get it. You just can't sell the truth, so you pander lies.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Care to list some other cherry-picked bull shit to show that the system which has consistently produced better education outcomes
Its kind of funny you complain about cherry-picking. Because that's what you did by focusing on the one item in the entire article which the authors literally spell out is the single statistic that the charter school supporters like to cite while ignoring all the others like:
Notably, the state’s charter schools scored worse on that test than their traditional public-school counterparts, according to an analysis of federal data.
Critics say Michigan’s laissez-faire attitude about charter-school regulation has led to marginal and, in some cases, terrible schools in the state’s poorest communities as part of a system dominated by for-profit operators.
The results in Michigan are so disappointing that even some supporters of school choice are critical of the state’s policies.
The summary is that charter schools in rich areas work out great just like public schools in rich areas work out great because being rich is great. But charter schools in poor areas work out worse than public schools in poor areas. And since black americans, on average have just a 14 cents for every dollar that white americans have, that means black people will end up attending the shittiest charter schools.
Furthermore, multiple independent researchers studying the three of the largest voucher systems in the country have all found that vouchers uniformly produce crappier outcomes than public education.
NYT: Dismal Voucher Results Surprise Researchers as DeVos Era Begins
But even as school choice is poised to go national, a wave of new research has emerged suggesting that private school vouchers may harm students who receive them. The results are startling — the worst in the history of the field, researchers say.
The new voucher studies stand in marked contrast to research findings that well-regulated charter schools in Massachusetts and elsewhere have a strong, positive impact on test scores. But while vouchers and charters are often grouped under the umbrella of “school choice,” the best charters tend to be nonprofit public schools, open to all and accountable to public authorities. The less “private” that school choice programs are, the better they seem to work.
FBI statistics also indicate that black commit extremely disproportionately skewed numbers of murders & manslaughter (52.2% of all murder/manslaughter committed by blacks), rapes (31.3% of all rapes committed by blacks), robbery (56.4% of all robbery committed by blacks), assault (33.9% of all assaults committed by blacks). On the positive side, only 12.5% of DWI are committed by blacks.
As a part of the overall population, blacks are about 13.5% of the US population, but commit more than half of all homicides and robberies, and one-third of all rapes and assaults.
Also on the positive side, the FBI asserts that a hugely disproportionate number of those crimes attributed to blacks are largely concentrated within a few hundred thousand young men involved in gangs. And largely victimize other black people.
[WaPo]
Police have shot and killed a young black man (ages 18 to 29) — such as Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. —175 times since January 2015; 24 of them were unarmed. Over that same period, police have shot and killed 172 young white men, 18 of whom were unarmed. Once again, while in raw numbers there were similar totals of white and black victims, blacks were killed at rates disproportionate to their percentage of the U.S. population. Of all of the unarmed people shot and killed by police in 2015, 40 percent of them were black men, even though black men make up just 6 percent of the nation’s population.
About 13 percent of all black people who have been fatally shot by police since January 2015 were unarmed, compared with 7 percent of all white people.
[/WaPo]
According to FBI statistics, 52.2% of all murder/manslaughter was committed by blacks. Blacks are 13.5% of the population.
According to FBI statistics, 56.4% of all robbery was committed by blacks. Blacks are 13.5% of the population.
According to FBI statistics, 31.3% of all rape was committed by blacks. Blacks are 13.5% of the population.
According to FBI statistics, 33.9% of all aggravated assault was committed by blacks. Blacks are 13.5% of the population.
On the positive side, the FBI says many of those crimes are highly concentrated in a small fraction of the black population in criminal gangs, where they most often prey on each other. The larger black population is no more criminal than the rest of the populace.
If you READ the actually data It simply says ARRESTS, not convictions or that they actually committed the crime. don't confuse the two.
Thanks for attempting to Correct the Record, there, AC, but you left out this bit about the Clintons from The Hill article:
"They also obtained an eyewitness account — backed by documents — indicating Russian nuclear officials had routed millions of dollars to the U.S. designed to benefit former President Bill Clinton’s charitable foundation during the time Secretary of State Hillary Clinton served on a government body that provided a favorable decision to Moscow, sources told The Hill."
and that helps to put the bit you tried to quote in a fuller context. So here's the full paragraph you butchered:
"The final court case also made no mention of any connection to the influence peddling conversations the FBI undercover informant witnessed about the Russian nuclear officials trying to ingratiate themselves with the Clintons even though agents had gathered documents showing the transmission of millions of dollars from Russia’s nuclear industry to an American entity that had provided assistance to Bill Clinton’s foundation, sources confirmed to The Hill."
I'd say your redactions paint a different picture than what the thrust of the article was about.