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Twitter Says It Exposed Nearly 700,000 People To Russian Propaganda During Election (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Twitter this evening released a new set of statistics related to its investigation on Russia propaganda efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election, including that 677,775 people were exposed to social media posts from more than 50,000 automated accounts with links to the Russian government. Many of the new accounts uncovered have been traced back to an organization called the the Internet Research Agency, or IRA, with known ties to the Kremlin. The data was first presented in an incomplete form to the Senate Select Intelligence Committee last November, which held hearings to question Facebook, Google, and Twitter on the role the respective platforms and products played in the Russian effort to help elect President Donald Trump. Twitter says it's now uncovered more accounts and new information on the wide-reaching Russian cyberintelligence campaign.
"Consistent with our commitment to transparency, we are emailing notifications to 677,775 people in the United States who followed one of these accounts or retweeted or liked a Tweet from these accounts during the election period," writes Twitter's public policy division in a blog post published today. "Because we have already suspended these accounts, the relevant content on Twitter is no longer publicly available."
"Consistent with our commitment to transparency, we are emailing notifications to 677,775 people in the United States who followed one of these accounts or retweeted or liked a Tweet from these accounts during the election period," writes Twitter's public policy division in a blog post published today. "Because we have already suspended these accounts, the relevant content on Twitter is no longer publicly available."
Is it that ad ridden social network full of crackpots, some of them threatening with nuclear war? Does anybody sane still use it?
The rest of the world just takes it as a given that they're being exposed to American propaganda.
There is a huge whiff of "us be bad guys, us get taste of own medicine? Unpossible!"
Maybe if the Democrats had run Sanders and not Felonia Von Pantsuit, they wouldn't have given the Russians such a target-rich environment.
Look, it's not hard. If Clinton were the Foreign Minister of any of our NATO allies, her government would have put her in prison for a very long time for even a third of what she's accused of doing.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
We have no idea what Mueller has, but the people he is handing subpoenas to is highly interesting.
What about twitters own people saying on video they wish to "ban a way of talking" from "shitty people"... their words. Forget russia what about twitter's own propaganda via censorship?
Why should it work that way? It's just an easy cop out to not provide evidence. If you don't feel like participating in the discussion, then don't participate at all, instead of proudly proclaiming that you're not going to hop into in good faith.
It should work that way because the poster is demanding evidence. It's perfectly reasonable to ask what they would accept as evidence.
If you can't even say what your standards of evidence are, you are arguing about belief, not facts.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
If this really was a disinformation campaign, it wasn't even vaguely successful.
Twitter would melt down overnight if they enforced this in an even remotely evenhanded way.
Changing the trending section to show TrumpShutdown instead of SchumerShutdown, even though a basic Civics class and understanding shows clearly that this is a Democrat action isn't propaganda ?
Removing the hashtag Release the memo from trending because a left leaning PAC said something about Russian bots isn't propaganda ?
Twitter please. And they say right wingers are prone to believing conspiracies.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
I'm fairly sick of Twitter and Facebook going on about this. The Internet is full of propaganda. The world is full of propaganda. We should not be surprised if Russia meddled a bit, because we meddle in everyone else's affairs, especially in the Middle East. I don't like Trump much either, but the fact is that people are using this merely as a way to comfort themselves about him having won the election. But does it really make a difference? Were we really naive enough to think that democracy was truly fair in the first place?
Let's think about this rationally. 700,000 were exposed; that's a tiny number. A Google search says that almost 139,000,000 voted. So that means that about 0.5%--a mere half percent of voters may have been exposed. But chances are that only some of those who were exposed actually voted. And then most of them probably already were Trump supporters in the first place, who merely grabbed hold of the propaganda as confirmation of their already-held point of view. So it's impossible to say how much it affected the vote--especially given the complexities of the electoral college and the fact that we do not know where these viewers lived--but chances are that it did not affect it enough to have swayed anything.
Or let's put it another way: the burden of proof would be on those who would claim that Russia actually changed the outcome of the election. Prove it. I sincerely doubt that it will ever be proved, but people will go on and on about it because it gives them a kind of comfort to think that it was really the fault of some sinister external force. People love blaming outsiders, or even internal minorities who are treated as outsiders--such as Mexicans like myself--but it is a sad, pathetic, illegitimate comfort.
Incipiamus, fratres, servire Domino Deo, quia hucusque vix vel parum in nullo profecimus.
Those exposed will be multi-millions.
"... also removed more than 220,000 third-party apps responsible for millions of suspicious tweets ..."
And that's only the little bit the Russians did. My gut feeling is the game was much bigger still. The real totals will be appreciated only after it's not affecting.
Just because the Russians did this (as per the facts of this article) doesn't mean Team Trump "colluded" with them to make it happen. It's known that Putin hated HRC (for, among other things, saying the Russian elections were rigged, back in 2011, when she was SoS). It's not a far stretch to suggest that rather than being primarily interested in helping Trump, they were interested in hurting Hillary. Helping Trump would just have been a means to an end.
Yuri Bezmenov
After being assigned to a station in India, Bezmenov eventually grew to love the people and the culture of India, but at the same time, he began to resent the KGB-sanctioned oppression of intellectuals who dissented from Moscow's policies. He defected to Canada
At this point, any shred of evidence would suffice. It's been a whole year of people talking and talking and no one even showing a shred of evidence.
At least if you provided ANYTHING, it would give us something to actually talk about. At this point, this is just people shouting over each other's head, and the Democrats showing they are sore losers who can't accept their candidate's failing.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
Hacked the DNC and DCCC,
Allegedly.
hacked elections systems in several states, grabbing electoral data.
Allegedly.
Handing the electoral data and political information to people like Aaron Nevins and defacto co-ordinating with them to get Ron DeSantis elected in Florida
Allegedly.
There are plenty of allegations flying around that this was all Russia's doing. It very well may have been. What is lacking is evidence.
It would be politically expedient for the US if it were Russia behind the meddling. It may or may not be politically expedient for Russia to have Trump as president. Hillary was a known quantity to Russia. They've dealt with her before as Secretary of State. Knowing how someone operates is diplomatically valuable.
Trump *seemed* to be more friendly to Russia, but he was also incredibly flaky, even as a candidate. The reasoning behind a coordinated push to back Trump over Hilary seems tenuous at best.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
If someone asks for evidence, present the most compelling and convincing evidence you have. It is a lame dodge, and implicit admission that you have nothing, to demand that someone else define a standard of evidence -- because you would then just argue about their definition instead of providing evidence.
How many of those tens of thousands of followers came from Russian Twitter farms?
Every single one of our intelligence agencies are convinced that the Russians directly influenced our election but you believe it is a lie?
It's funny you quote that, as that was debunked as well :
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/29/pageoneplus/corrections-june-29-2017.html
A White House Memo article on Monday about President Trumpâ(TM)s deflections and denials about Russia referred incorrectly to the source of an intelligence assessment that said Russia orchestrated hacking attacks during last yearâ(TM)s presidential election. The assessment was made by four intelligence agencies â" the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency. The assessment was not approved by all 17 organizations in the American intelligence community.
So who should you believe ? Obviously, you've been believing the wrong people.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
Where's the outrage?
That doesn't work because what convinces me won't necessarily convince you. That's because of differences in Bayesian prior beliefs.
Some people also like to waste your time demanding you marshal information they have no intention of looking at. It's like playing a game where they don't tell you the rules, or are free to change the rules to suit themselves.
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Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. We have no idea what Mueller has, but the people he is handing subpoenas to is highly interesting.
Either Mueller really has some dynamite shit on trump that we don't know about; or he will become biggest lamb to the slaughter house in history since about AD 36 or so when Lidia the mother of Tiberius died. The back stabbing and bullshit going on in Washington since Trump started his rise to power before the coming of Obama is in many ways similar to what happened to the Roman Empire after the reign of Augustus. It is a sad situation when neighbors start to rattle sabers and defame each other and a symptom of a sickness within the US democratic system that somehow must be resolved. If the Trump Republicans turf 800,000 mostly active productive humans out the window and no one in the Republican party cares enough to help stop the slaughter then the US deserves the scorn it will receive internationally. If the Democrats hold Trump to ransom on this issue are they really that evil?
Most Canadians feel for the individuals about to be abused by Trump's vain and inhuman policy in this regard and I am sure the influx of another wave of largely talented caring young people into our country will not hurt our economy in any way. Even if the US considers Canada to be unfairly subsidizing lumber, the truth is in reality we have been subsidizing American Corporations and helping deal with your racially motivated insanity for a very long time. The removal of this charlatan from office by impeachment might be the only way to return to any sanity at all and start to heal the divisions this asshole has fed upon and indeed created. Either that or replace the Statue of Liberty with a Trump tower with a stone on the bottom inscribed with; "Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she With silent lips. "Give me your tired rich, Your huddled well healed masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the ambitious, opportunistic lost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden Trump Tower's door!"
This message was not sent from an iPhone because Peter Sellers really was a deviated prevert without a dime for the call
another wave of largely talented caring young people into our country will not hurt our economy in any way.
That's the problem. Illegals in the US are NOT largely talented or caring. The stats just do not support this tired narrative. Education is lower than the average, skillsets are lower than the average, participation in crime is higher than the average.
Also, where were you when the Canadian governement put an end to its own TPS program for Haitians in 2016 ? You say Trump is inhumane, but Canada ended their program a full 2 YEARS prior to the US. Are you saying Canada is even less humane ? Or maybe you just forgot what the word TEMPORARY means.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
As I said, you are more interested in arguing about standards of evidence -- with the implication that the people asking for evidence are so unreasonable that nothing will convince them -- than actually pointing to evidence.
Here's a bonus hint to not sound pretentiously ignorant: Nobody is engaging in Bayesian reasoning about this. Nobody's going to give you a prior probability that politician X colluded with the Russians on subject Y, unless politician X has been caught on tape telling the Russians how much more flexibility X will have after his election. Nobody is going to give a formula on how to form an a posteriori belief from the combination of an a priori belief and a particular piece of evidence, until all the parameters are set -- at which point it is entirely an ad hoc, political, and non-repeatable exercise.
... a spit in the bucket. 700,000 people saw an "impression" perhaps once over the whole election. In a country of 350,000,000 that's less than half a percent got a Russian made "impression" on Twitter. The Dems have a very empty case. Moreover, the Russians have as much right to post on Twitter as anyone. Trump is right (again) on this one.
That is not much of a correction, though. Those four entities comprise the vast bulk of (the operations and analysis in) the American intelligence community, and are the most involved with questions of Russian influence in US affairs. Do you think the US Coast Guard Intelligence or the Department of Energy's Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence are going to have particular insights into Russian attempts to influence our elections?
Would meetings by people in the campaign with what they believe to be people working for the Russian Government for purposes of obtaining favors rise to the level of collusion for you?
The definition of collusion is simple :
col . lu . sion
secret or illegal cooperation or conspiracy, especially in order to cheat or deceive others.
So for this "meeting" to be collusion, it would require for it to be to "cheat" or "deceive" and have been secret or illegal. Does said meeting meet those requirements ?
Let's look at the other side. Was it in fact deception that even led to this meeting ? And did this deception require special steps from an outside influence ?
Is the fact the meeting took place collusion, or did collusion result in said meeting even taking place under false pretenses ? So what do you think about me thinking about a "simple meeting" being equal to collusion now ?
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
Next.
Wow. They reached 0.5% of the registered voters. With an indeterminate effect on even those. That's pretty much a failure.
When will the sore Hillary! losers stop looking for someone else to blame, for their election failure?
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Yes. That is what a witness report is
But we don't even have those. We have officials saying they have evidence. There might be witness reports. There might be forensic evidence (which is even more questionable when it comes to the DNC server hacks, as the DNC used a private firm to do the analysis and not the FBI.)
What do you expect? That they are going to go into Trumps office and find a box labeled "proof" containing a bag of "hacks" and gloves with traces of electoral data on them?
I expect an explanation as to why the FBI/DNC/whomever is making the allegation, as to why they believe the Russian government was involved directly beyond "trust us we have evidence." These are serious allegations. They require solid evidence. Especially when certain three letter agencies have been known to cook up "evidence" when it meets a particular political need.
Aside from that, the main reason I'm skeptical is that, unless we have intelligence coming from the Russian government itself, it's pretty damned hard to prove where a particular intrusion came from. Someone using an off the shelf vulnerability scanner piped through a VPN or TOR endpoint originating in Russia, or a botnet operating in Russia - good luck tracing that. As far as the DNC email "hacks" go, IIRC the hackers guessed an easy password to get into at least one account.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
STOP IT, I come here to read real tech news, not the same fucking MSM bullshit fake news.
that wrote the trump dossier? Just seening some summaries would be enough. Trump _is_ more friendly with Russia. That's not alleged. He has tens of millions of dollars of sketchy loans and business deals with them. One of their oligarchs bought a property from them for $45 million more than it was worth. They're also the reason he could get credit. Russians bought enough property from him that he was able to get loans on the basis of those sales when he otherwise couldn't get loans (proof of high per unit sales can be used to secure loans in the real estate industry). And his ties the the Russian mafia are anything but alleged.
Everyone talks about the pee tape but the real story is that Russia could pretty easily blackmail our president. Hell, they're probably doing it as we speak.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
People engage in Bayesian reasoning all the time, even if they don't know what that is. Everyone does this. If you actually believe anyone in the Trump organization would never collude with Russians, then Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya and Rinat Akhmetshin appears entirely innocent to you, even though Trump Jr. has openly admitted he was seeking Russian government supplied dirt on Clinton.
Likewise the meeting between George Papadopolous and Joseph Mifsud in which Mifsud offered a Russian government trove of emails from the Clinton campaign was perfectly innocent. Papadoploous lying about that meeting to the FBI was also a perfectly innocent mistake.
And when in response to Papadopolous's attempt to set up a meeting involving Trump Paul Manafort complained "It should be someone low level in the campaign so as not to send any signal," he really meant that nobody in the campaign should be doing it.
So given that people who believe there isn't a shred of evidence of collusion aren't impressed by these fairly well-established facts attested to by the participants, I think it's perfectly legitimate to what level of evidence in your opinion constitutes "a shred"?
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but that doesn't mean we shouldn't do something about it. I'm not surprised murders and robbers exist. But that doesn't mean I disband the police and leave my doors unlocked.
And I recognize there are a _lot_ of mentally vulnerable people out there. It's too difficult and risky to bar them from voting. It's also tough to get the right information to them, but we can at least try. We can also invest in teaching people critical thinking and making them aware that propaganda exists.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
OK, so your standard of proof is an admission of guilt by the Russian government?
Then I'd say by that standard there is not ever going to be any proof.
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Sure, people engage in Bayesian reasoning without realizing it, but mostly they don't. They engage in much less rigorous but superficially similar reasoning. It's stupid to suggest that any time you update your beliefs based on new information, it's Bayesian, because people were doing that long before Bayes came along and provided a statistically rigorous way to do it.
Why don't you define what you mean by "collusion", so that anyone else can say what kind of evidence of "collusion" they would accept? The incidents you cited are evidence that the Trump campaign was interested in oppo research. Which "attested" facts suggest any kind of quid pro quo?
Collusion is cooperation with foreign entities which a reasonable person would expect to be breaking US law or otherwise attempting to influence the outcome of the US election.
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That is not much of a correction, though. Those four entities comprise the vast bulk of (the operations and analysis in) the American intelligence community, and are the most involved with questions of Russian influence in US affairs. Do you think the US Coast Guard Intelligence or the Department of Energy's Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence are going to have particular insights into Russian attempts to influence our elections?
If they didn't, why did the Media and Democrats push the narrative of 17 intelligence agencies ? The problem is that the FBI/CIA/NSA's credibility is in the pits. People simply don't believe those agencies are working for the population anymore and thus if a report came out of those 3, it's going to be met with skepticism. This is why the 17 number was pushed at first, and later retracted without much fanfare.
And the GP poster proved their strategy worked, as he is now repeating said 17 number, as if the claim is indisputable. This was simply an attempt to disarm any questioning of the conclusion. Russian "meddling" is still mostly unfounded, and the most they've come up with after 1 year is 100,000$ worth of Facebook ads coming from Russia.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
So what does "cooperation" mean? Your definition seems foolishly broad, because using the common definition of cooperation, probably any politician who seeks national office, a governorship, or the like, has "colluded" under your definition.
It's equally lame when you provide it and the other party says "that's not good enough" regardless of how strong it is. Hence asking for the bar to prevent trolls from trolling you by arguing that standards are not relevant.
Ezekiel 23:20
(Hence asking for the bar in advance, of course)
Ezekiel 23:20
The media pushed the 17 number because they're mostly credulous fools, as Ben Rhodes pointed out. I don't know enough about particular politicians to speculate whether they actually lied or just accepted a number without checking it.
If your beef is with the credibility of the IC, would you have been convinced if the Treasury Department's Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence signed on? My earlier comment about the other elements of the IC applies also to the question of trust: they're so minor or unrelated to the crux of the report that I doubt anyone would be swayed by their sign-off.
This is a good response. Just to be clear, something can be wrong or unpatriotic without being criminal. However your assertion that "collusion" is not a crime isn't correct. Collusion with foreign entities attempting to influence the outcome of US elections is against the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002. There are a number of other federal statutes under which people could be charged, but that law was written specifically to address this kind of thing.
It's still early in the investigation. The way a criminal investigation works is that you find the most vulnerable people, often small fry, and squeeze them for evidence until you've got the biggest fish you can find. We have a number of small to medium fish who have pled guilty to various infractions, the one that's actually most indicative of campaign wrongdoing is George Papadopolous's guilty plea to obstruction. You can read that pleading online, and in it he admits to doing things which are clearly illegal under the Campaign Reform Act, and informing the campaign. We know from other sources Paul Manafort, the campaign director at the time, was aware of these activities and approved of them as long as they didn't involve senior officials.
Given that, you've got at least probable cause to suspect a conspiracy to break a specific US law, which should meet your standard.
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You're full of shit. As someone else pointed out, you post the best you have. The evidence should always be looked at, and if it seems suspect, should be questioned. Why my original post got modded down as flamebait for calling you out for being purposely disingenuous is beyond me. In your next post you double down on being disingenuous.
It's clear you're not here to participate in good faith.
I refer you to the Campaign Act of 2002, also known as "McCain-Feingold", which forbids any foreign entity from providing "any thing of value" to a campaign, and
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That does not answer my question. First, because it is already covered by your condition for criminal behavior, violating McCain-Feingold would count as "collusion", so pointing to it cannot answer the question of what "cooperation" is. Secondly, under the normal rules of statutory construction, because the law bans accepting or soliciting the donation or transfer of "money or other thing of value", an exchange of information would not be covered. (Even if the law attempted to cover exchanges of information, it is questionable whether such an attempt would survive scrutiny under the First Amendment. Other parts of the law have been struck down on First Amendment grounds.)
OK, so you're hung up an issue of terminology. Solicitation of an illegal activity, which is itself illegal, doesn't fit your definition of "collusion", but it's still illegal.
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You can think that Trump is a criminal that should be shot into the sun, and still think that the "Russian collusion" angle is just bullshit the DNC made up to cover their asses.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
No, I told you why (a) the actions you described are not illegal under the law you cited, and (b) why your comment didn't clarify your piss-poor definition of "collusion". Perhaps you should get out of that mental rut that you're in.
Out of 330M or so...one person in 500 was "exposed" to Russian bad-thought, which isn't the same as "one person in 500 changed their vote to Trump as a result of Russian bad-thought....
Doesn't sound like much of a problem to me. It's not like people weren't exposed to foreign media regularly, all of which talked about the American Presidential elections at one time or another (it does,after all, have a moderately enormous affect on the world as a whole).
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Either Mueller really has some dynamite shit on trump that we don't know about;
Considering the prosecutors that are willing to drop their high paid jobs to work on the case you can be pretty sure that it is something significant.
They aren't exactly nobodies that are looking to make a name for themselves. Most of them are considered to be the top name in their respective field.
It looks a lot like FBI have been investigating Trump since way before the election campaigning started and just handed everything over to Muller on his first day on the job.
But that doesn't mean it will lead anywhere. Impeaching a president is a completely political deal so the entire investigation is pretty pointless.
If the congress doesn't want Trump gone then evidence doesn't matter. If they want him gone they don't need much evidence at all.
Well, we'll see whether your first amendment interpretation stands up, but your understanding of first amendment law conflicts with case law.
Sure you can publish illegally obtained information that's thrown over the transom, but you can't solicit an illegal act, and US news organizations have been successfully convicted despite their right to publish the illegally obtained information.
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Mainstream media got it wrong as always. Russian's are not the main problem. It the tech giants like Facebook and Twitter who influence people's opinions.
I am not relying on the First Amendment to declare the actions that you described as legal. I am relying on the normal rules of statutory interpretation. See, for example, Yates v. United States (2015) for a case where a fish was not a "tangible object" in the context of a particular law, because the context of the words "tangible object" made it clear -- or at least clear enough for the US Supreme Court (including Justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor) -- that Congress meant something more specific than "any tangible object".
All of the things you said Trump's people did occurred after the information was obtained, so whether that information was obtained legally or illegally, they could not have solicited an illegal act to obtain that information.
Now Russia is associated with right-wing conservatism? WTF? When did this happen?
It's almost as if the left is using the time honoured tactic of accusing the opposition of doing exactly what you are doing.
For example, hypothetically, let's suppose the DNC paid to have Russian sources create a phony dossier, then use that dossier to get a FISA warrant to spy on the opposition party.
That would certainly be collusion on the part of the DNC and Russia. And what better way to distract the public than to blame Trump of colluding with Russia?
Nobody is claiming that proprietary information is "tangible".
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That is not much of a correction, though.
Actually, it's as telling as telling can get. The fact that the initial claim was that all 17 agencies believed rather than the 4, which did, clearly means that whoever made the claim did not read the actual reports. Now who are you going to believe? Politicians who state that reports (which they haven't read) claim that Russia tried to sway US Presidential election or some guy on slashdot? Well, if the reason for not believing the guy on slashdot is that he is misinformed, consider the fact that the politicians making the claim are not only misinformed, but they also have vested interest in mis-stating the conclusions.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
I hope they use that standard of evidence at your murder trial.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
No, you were merely implying that information is a "thing of value", when the phrase "thing of value" was in a section of a law called "STRENGTHENING FOREIGN MONEY BAN" [sic], in spite of the facts that information is not a thing, there is no objective way to assess a value for that information, and similar clauses have never (successfully) been applied to exchanges of information.
I hope that makes the situation clear enough to help you understand why your evidence isn't evidence of "collusion" in any useful sense of the word.
He was an agent of USSR. USSR was a Communist dictatorship. It dissolved in 1991. USSR had 300 million people. USSR had media controls as strong as those of North Korea.
Russian Federation is a country of 145 million people. Russian Federation, until recently, was a member of G8. It had open trade policy with the West until Western sanctions started (in response to its annexation of Crimea). It has a mixed economy with strong government stake in natural resources and essentially no oversight in the service-sector economy.
If you want to attribute to the Russian Federation some kind of inheritance of the institutions of the USSR, you are going to have to explain how that's possible in a country which has less than half the population, has a completely different legal system, has a completely different economic system, and has an entirely different trade policy.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
If you don't understand the meaning of words, why should we expect you to believe any evidence?
As Donald Trump himself famously said,
Believe me, people who believe the words of someone who starts sentences with "believe me" will never believe evidence.
https://youtu.be/rMmiLWDpCno
You are welcome on my lawn.
I explained why using the "common definition" of cooperation would make the suggested definition of "collusion" useless. I asked what hey! meant by "cooperation" to allow them to try to rescue their definition of "collusion".
If you can't understand a simple two-sentence comment, maybe you should take Hillary Clinton's advice and Delete your account.
FTFY. And of course its Swiftboating - everything Hillbots have been accusing Trump of doing, Hillary was actually guilty of. From rigging a (primary) election to not just colluding with but paying for foreign intelligence agents for dirt on a general election opponent.
The evidence we now have is very substantial but circumstantial.
http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/...
https://www.newyorker.com/news...
Demanding evidence from Slashdot commenters when there is an ongoing - and accelerating - investigation going on by Robert Mueller is pretty disingenuous. By the way, that investigation has already produced arrests and convictions of Trump associates.
You gotta admit, for someone with "no collusion", there sure are a lot of people lying about dealings with Russians. A lot of effort being expended in order to cover up something that they claim doesn't exist.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Like the $5000 on Facebook ads (many of which were anti-Trump or hawking Obama merchandise) in an election where Hillary spent a biiiiiiilion dollars.
You could save us all time on this lovely Saturday if you simply admit that there is no evidence you would ever believe. Not from Slashdot commenters, not from the Mueller investigation and not even from Donald Trump's own mouth. Whether in the comments to a Slashdot article or in a court of law, you will never believe because that would violate a basic tenet of your faith in Benedict Donald.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The evidence is very circumstantial, that's for sure.
Asking the Russians to not retaliate against new sanctions is "tak[ing] steps to undermine or contradict the administrationâ(TM)s response to Russiaâ(TM)s election interference"? An email explaining how the Obama administration was trying to undermine the incoming Trump administration is supposedly "smoking-gun evidence" of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia?
Are you even reading the articles you link to, or just "feeling" them and accepting their conclusions without paying attention?
Russiagate is bullshit. Always has been, always will be. When Russiagaters are confronted with the fact that they are as full of shit as anti-vaxxers, chem trailers and birthers, they engage in petulant hand waving rather than deal with the fact they've bought into a conspiracy so insane you'd have Alex Jones embarrassed to be in the same room as you.
Yes, in a classic case of Swiftboating, everything Hillbots are baselessly accusing Trump of doing, their candidate actually did. Rigged an election? Check, the Democratic primary. Not just colluded with foreign intelligence for dirt against a general election opponent, but paid for it? Check! Corrupt deal with Russian interests? Check! Literally, to Bill Clinton from people pushing the uranium deal.
Yeah, slick, its a witch hunt. An investigation that starts with a single issue but the prosecutor uses it as a special warrant to look for any evidence of any wrongdoing, anywhere....Dembots were pretty pissed in the 90's when it was Ken Starr and Whitewater.
Because Russiagaters have just as much evidence to back up their bullshit as do the anti-vaxxers, birthers and chem trailers.
Pro-tip: assertions and speculation are not evidence. Just ask anti-vaxxers, birthers and chem trailers.
You first, dipshit. Then come back with the evidence.
Eh.
Vi.
Dense.
For issues that have nothing whatsoever to do with Russiagate. Which is why Russiagaters are as pathetic as anti-vaxxing chem trailing birthers.
I am not in the habit of admitting things that I know are false. It is not my fault if you mistake rhetoric for actual evidence, and on that basis confirm your previous biases.
Cool story, bro. How would you say that matches up to the CIA plan to place bombs in Miami and blow up planes as a false flag operation to blame on Cuba? Now, since Western Exceptionalists are predictable, whatabboutery is a term you came up with to use whenever it's pointed out that not only does your shit stink, it stinks works.
Don't throw stones in a glass house.
That's not what's happening. The Dems have two issues they won't move on. DACA & CHIP. Both are supported by a majority of Americans. Both seem fairly reasonable. Furthermore, the Republicans have a long, long history of reneging on promises. The Dems would be fools to take the bait. They'll just get blamed when either DACA or CHIP goes down in flames.
The Republicans have a huge edge here. For one thing they control all branches of the government. For another their largely indifferent to DACA & CHIP. They'd just as soon pocket the CHIP money for themselves in the form of tax cuts. As for DACA, they don't want to lose 3 million workers (imagine what that would do for wages in this country when that kind of labor shortage hit) but their base wants DACA dead and counteracting the backlash when they reinstate it is going to be expensive.
Basically, the Republicans are much, much better at playing hardball. But to be blunt, it's easier when you're not considering the collateral damage in terms of pain and suffering. And I think there's a strong argument to be made that, frankly, they don't.
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So who should you believe ?
Setting up fake accounts on social media and posting bullshit with the intent to influence does not constitute hacking.
Most of the planet is exposed to American propaganda 24 hours a day, 365 days a year (mostly thanks to Hollywood and other forms of American media), and we don't cry like little babies. So much for American exceptionalism...
As another poster said, you don't even have that. What you do have is the same amount of evidence that the Birthers had that Obama's birth certificate was faked so he could run for the presidency. Assertions are not evidence - just ask the Birthers.
The investigation is bullshit. If it wasn't, the first thing Mueller would have done would have been to subpoena the DNC servers for a proper FBI investigation. You know, the allegedly hacked DNC servers that make up the cornerstone of the entire Russiagate narrative.
Deranged witch hunts aren't justice. Come crawling back when Ken Starr, I mean Mueller, finally hangs up his hat without a single conviction related to what he was hired to do: show evidence of Russia meddling in the election and colluding with Trump to do so.
Only people as stupid as anti-vaxxers and birthers would say such a thing without evidence. Speaking of stupid, have you thought about this narrative for two seconds? Putin was supposedly crafty to know, years in a advance, that Trump could be elected president of the United States - but dumb enough to collude with someone as dumb as Trump to do so.
Which means the FBI/CIA/NSA would have known as well. Which means President Hillary - who campaigned on shooting down Russian jets in Syria - would have known it as well. You do remember it was her election to lose, right up until she selected a right-wing pro-life running mate and didn't bother to campaign in the Rust Belt states that handed Trump the White House?
An X-Ray of a Russiagaters skull will show 10 pounds of bullshit crammed into a 3 pound cranium.
Hillary Clinton's campaign paid foreign agent Christopher Steele to purchase information from Russian agents with the goal of creating a dossier damaging Donald Trump's reputation.
Collusion?
Conspiracy?
FISA warrant abuse?
In all seriousness:
Upping the levels of McCarthyism doesn't not evidence make.
which is just how slim a margin Trump won by. A small amount of spending in the right place is all that was really needed. Now, to be fair a big part of the problem is Hilary, like Romney before her, got ripped off by her consultants (by all accounts 5 of them took $700 million of the $1 billion she had and did nothing with it, they just kept it).
You're also forgetting what they ads were like. They weren't 'vote Trump!' ads. They were targeted to Trump voters. They were there to rile up and scare Trump voters. Their purpose was to make sure those people showed up at the polls for Trump.
A lot of things went into the disaster that is the Trump presidency. DNC corruption, Hilary's arrogance and incompetence, Obama not paying attention to his party, right wing Dems taking the working class for granted. The list goes on and on. It took a fundamental break down of our political system. God willing the Dems won't run a right wing shmuck like Biden or another Hilary like Kamala Harris. If they do it's 4 more years of Trump.
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Rhetorical masturbation doesn't change the fact you can't prove a negative. It's upon Russiagaters to prove their assertions, period. Otherwise, I'll simply assert that you own a sheep ranch for a harem and leave you to disprove that assertion.
Sure we do. He has nothing. If Mueller were actually serious about this, the first thing he would have done was subpoena the DNC servers for a proper FBI investigation, as the Russia-hacked-the-DNC is the Jenga block holding up the entire Russiagate tower.
None of which has anything to do with Russiagate itself. Russiagaters don't seem to notice this, though.
Because the U.S. has spent the last couple hundred years fucking them over. Overthrowing their governments - some multiple times - invasions, sanctions, CIA death squads, supporting military dictatorships - and then you wonder why they flee without having gone to grad school. So you could ask for your taxes to be increased to pay a hundred trillion in reparations....
...or maybe just be quiet and let the poor bastards stock shelves at Wal-Mart.
Ok. How long do you want Hillary and her staffers to go to prison for paying for the Steele Dossier? Admitted collusion between foreign intelligence agents, with Russian sources, to swing a general election in the United States.
And because Democrats like Hillary Clinton kept repeating it. Like the lie that Saddam planned 911, this one will never go away.
You mean the same sort of people who told lies about Saddam having WMD's and planning 911? At this point, the burden of proof on the entire "intelligence community" is so high that if they claim water is wet, you'd better check for yourself. And consult a chemist just to be sure. Anyone who doesn't after the USG legalized domestic propaganda should send me their life savings before they lose it to a Nigerian prince.
Face it, you fucked up. You trusted us.
So far Russiagaters have provided just as much evidence for their ideas as Chem Trailers have to show the CIA really is putting mind-controlling gas into commercial jet fuel.
Hand waiving.
Private citizens enjoying their freedom of association. But if that's your smoking gun - how much time do you want Hillary and her staffers to serve for not just colluding with foreign intelligence agents to swing a general election, but paying for the Steele Dossier to do so?
Easy test of partisan hackery.
It's been like 2 years.... WHERE IS THE EVIDENCE?
The Mueller investigation started last May so it has been less than a year. They have been running a tight ship and none of us know the evidence and case Mueller has built against the Trump family. We know there has been 4 indictments and 2 guilty pleas. We know Mueller is getting bank records. There is a lot of smoke. Right now it appears Trump is cooked. When pigs like Sean Hannity squeal you can bet Mueller is on to something much bigger than collusion.
The Steele dossier is raw intelligence; it's not the kind evidence you could use to convict anyone, although it certainly merits further investigation.
The big issue are well-documented attempts to obtain intelligence from Russian state sources. Mueller has been very careful to obtain that in the guilty pleas he's got. That's what prompted the appointment of the special prosecutor, not the Steele dossier, which got a lot of media attention because of the pee pee tape thing.
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It would be politically expedient for the US if it were Russia behind the meddling. It may or may not be politically expedient for Russia to have Trump as president. Hillary was a known quantity to Russia. They've dealt with her before as Secretary of State. Knowing how someone operates is diplomatically valuable.
Trump *seemed* to be more friendly to Russia, but he was also incredibly flaky, even as a candidate. The reasoning behind a coordinated push to back Trump over Hilary seems tenuous at best.
If your goal is to weaken your opponent without any risk to yourself, do you:
a) Do nothing. Sit back, and wait until one person wins, and then decide what to do
b) Try to influence opinion to ensure the (mostly) competent politician gets the vote
c) Try to influence opinion to ensure the politically naive candidate gets the vote
While diplomatically option b) makes sense for future summit conferences, option c) has the potential to cause more disruption to your opponent, putting them on the back foot for those same future summit conferences.
"She's furniture with a pulse"
This shutdown belongs to the Rs, and by the poll the Americans know it.
I'm looking at the vote tally. 45 Rs, 5 Ds for. 44 Ds against, 5 Rs against.
Sure looks like this belongs to the Dems alright. This is a #SchumerShutdown.
Your attempts to believe otherwise not withstanding.
I'm sorry that my believing FACTS and REALITY bother you this much.
We put a party in power that fundamentally believes government can't work. It's a core part of their platform. How the heck are you suppose to run something you want to tear down? It's like putting Peta in charge of McDonald's.
The Republicans actually do not believe that Governement can't work. They aren't Anarchists. Are you that drunk on D kool-aid you never even bothered looking at what Republicans and Conservatives want ? Small governement. Borders, Immigration, Military, Law enforcement. Tearing down things like centralized powers that belong to the states is a GOOD thing. States should be able to control their policies and spending to work for their citizens. Because what's good for California sure doesn't hold water in Wisconsin.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
Woah there comrade! Have you been studying history? Having a knowledge of classical antiquity will not help Zuckerberg optimize the latest update to the Javascript ad delivery system! Stopping wasting your time on "liberal arts" and study something PRODUCTIVE! It's for your own good!
Faceplant does not need my help. It has very adequately replaced the liberal arts of communication by either debate or letters. And this is precisely the short coming of a site where I can share pictures of my latest bowel movements. Certainly "a picture is worth a thousand words" but millions of images can never replace a well reasoned argument well founded upon history and current events. Very many otherwise intelligent humans in Germany fell for Joseph Goebbels reasoned arguments, the same can be said about the propaganda that was spread over social networks by the Russians as well as Trump and his myrmidons. Let me see the next little ditty will be that Obama bought a phony birth certificate and that his terms as POTUS should therefore be stricken from the historical record.
Revisionist history is certainly not new and the origins of it go back as far as there was human governance, to ignore the study of how revisionist history plays a crucial role in the down fall of societies is a serious mistake, regardless if you have knowledge of server side scripting with javascript, php, ruby, perl or MS based .net nuttiness. For the record I code web sites and find a well founded historical knowledge invaluable in understanding why people will click on things and some will just hit the home button..;-)
This message was not sent from an iPhone because Peter Sellers really was a deviated prevert without a dime for the call
Some of us still remember the evidence some of these agencies offered for WMD in Iraq. Hearsay by US intelligence agencies is not what I consider "evidence." What I want to see is names of actual Russian controlled accounts, specific evidence (not intelligence hearsay), of who the account owners are (actual names, not some generic characterization), along with the contents of the postings they made that are being characterized as election influencing.
The question must be asked, "hacked the DNC and DCCC *to what end*?" If the answer is simply, "To air their dirty laundry to the public," all I can say is, bravo.
That is an entirely fair and reasonable criticism, and I think the one that people should lead off with. Many reports from government are backed up with only a "trust us" for explanation. While it is reasonable to not show everything the government knows about another government's covert operations, because shows not only what they missed but also tends to reveal how they identified the ones they did, I think they could provide relevant examples to illustrate a lot of claims.
In contrast, "only the four most relevant agencies signed off on this report, not the 13 other ones that are mostly irrelevant!" is a very weak critique of the report. I don't think that argument will change anyone's mind, which is why I criticized it.
the legal definition is considerably broader, especially with regards to hostile foreign powers and political candidates.
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when it comes to Trump... Anonymous Coward == Russian Troll
You're just too proud to admit you got hookwinked by the Russian propaganda machine. There's only two classes that have anything to gain from Trump becoming president: 1. Rich white people, and 2. Russia. If you can't see how both of those entities controlled the election then you're the intellectual equivalent of a marmot.
You know when Hillaryists go on and on about MUH ROOSKIES!!1!, you sound exactly like the "alt right" tards who go on and on about pizza pedo conspiracies.
All the anti-immigration people I've met are isolationists. They absolutely do not support the kind of foreign adventures you describe.
I disagree with those people on this political issue. But they are not monsters.
Nice wallotext!
"Guilty pleas" - i.e. coerced false confessions.
Feed the Gulag!
Truly terrifying- American.
It is and it isn't. The whole report masqueraded as an authoritative National Intelligence Assessment while it was not. In fact the claim that it was '4 agencies' was heavily overstated. It was a selection of people from 3 agencies and the people who should know and who should be able to come up with proof, the NSA, has less 'moderate' confidence in the conclusion than the CIA . That's like saying it's plausible. http://www.theamericanconserva...
"Propaganda"? -- or as we like to call it, "advertising".
Oh, the horror. Weak-minded voters being swayed by those who would try to ... sway them.
Instead of being swayed by other people who would sway them a different direction.
If an election can be changed by sneaky people, we might as well admit this whole "democracy" concept is a bad job, and go back to having a king, or something.
I'm available, folks.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
Isn't it odd that this completely new country that has absolutely no relation to the old one, is still somehow both populated and led by people from the old one?
Some of them. 145 million live in Russia. 50 million live in Ukraine. I think about 15 million live in Georgia. That's still out of 300 million who lived in the Soviet Union. Oh, and 25 years have passed. That's 1.5 generations who grew up under capitalist system in an open society. You do understand that the conflict with USSR was along ideological rather than geopolitical lines? The ideological differnce is foreign to the current generation of the Russian population. The geopolitical differences are no different from the ones with China.
And isn't it interesting that these people leading the new country have decades of experience, carried over from the old country,
Not even close. Not a single member of the Soviet Politburo remained in power after the collapse of the Soviet Union (25 years ago)... with the possible exception of Yeltsin, who at the time of the collapse was already the head of Russia (the administrative subdivision of the USSR) and was phased out of national USSR politics.
in fields such as espionage (Putin) and propaganda
Putin left KGB with the title of leutenant colonel. That's hardly a leadership position. His last assignment was as a station chief in Germany. That's the lowest leadership position a field intelligence officer can have. His political career was entirely in the post-soviet Russia.
Even if you consider Lavrov (the forein minister of Russia) to be a member of the old guard, you'd have to explain how an embassador to Sri Lanka became a foreign minister.
I don't know enough about the inner workings of the RF government to know who is Kiselyov. I seriously doubt he was a ranking member of the Communist Party of the USSR if he is in any kind of leadership position today. The Communists were completely disenfranchised.
But somehow its' state-run media is very much active in the West, trying to promote the "alternative", Russian, point of view?
I am more concerned about BBC's role in promoting the British point of view than I am about Russia having a voice. The constant denegration of former British colonies is completely out of step with the modern world.
isn't it awfully convenient that although Russia inherited no institutions from the USSR, it still somehow has, just like the USSR had, virtually no independent media and zero press freedom?
No, it's not convenient. It's a mark of any dictatorship. And Russia has emerged as a neo-fascist (not Nazi, but definitely classical fascist) state. If you look at you history, you'll that all fascist regimes emerged from weak democracies which resulted from post WWI upheaval. The descent into fascism in Russia was also a result of weakness of democratic institutions in the post-soviet Russia. But the democratic period did purge the old Communist guard. Comparing modern Russia to the USSR make as much sense as comparing Hitler's pre-war Germany to the Austrian Empire. They are just completely different animals.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Their support or opposition to CIA death squads etc doesn't change the fact that those things happened, and the USG owes its victims reparations. That would be paid for via taxes.
And what's the Venn diagram on nativists who also:
1) Want the US to have the strongest military in the world
2) Want the US to have the strongest intelligence in the world
3) Have a completely irrational love for capitalism
4) Have a completely irrational fear of socialism
....four things that when added together, make this kind of imperialism inevitable. That, and we're already working with a high level of cognitive dissonance here, as the descendants of white European invaders call the descendants of native inhabitants "illegal Immigrants".
Canada is part of the same imperial club as the United States. Member of NATO, member of the Five Eyes, participated in the illegal invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. If you had a real socialist get elected as prime minister of Canada, the CIA would be all over his ass like flies on shit.
Then it will be easy for you to show it.
For reasons that have nothing whatsover to do with Russiagate.
Not a Trump supporter. Just someone who doesn't have his lead lodged up his ass 15 years after the same "intelligence community" lied you into a war with Iraq. Let me guess...you were smearing skeptics as "Saddam lovers" at the time, weren't you?
Because everything Hillbots are so far falsely accusing Trump of doing, Hillary in fact did. Indisputably. Corrupt deals with Russian interests? Check! Literally, to Bill Clinton from people pushing the uranium deal. Rigged an election? Check, the Democratic primary. Colluded with foreign intelligence agents to swing a general election? Check! Again literally, to pay for the Steele Dossier.
Yes. You are.
You guys are still trying to fuck that chicken after it came out that not only did the Hillary campaign collude with foreign intelligence agents to rig a general election, they paid for it?
So, how many people actually buy a car because of an advertisement? Then, of course, we've got a very polarized electorate. Consequently, the propaganda must have been focused on democrats. Are democrats open more or less to influence by propaganda? Sounds like a learning opportunity for the DNC.
Crimea voted to join Russia after your literal neo-Nazi pals overthrew the elected government of Ukraine, and started passing legislation that was extremely hostile and discriminatory to minorities. Like the ethnic Russians and Tatars living in Crimea.
Were Pussy Riot waterboarded or beaten to death you god. damned. dumb. fuck? The United States killed at least one hundred people through torture that we know of.