They know everything about making Black people vote in Detroit!
Upon request by the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), New
Knowledge reviewed an expansive data set of social media posts and metadata provided to
SSCI by Facebook, Twitter, and Alphabet, plus a set of related data from additional platforms.
The data sets were provided by the three primary platforms to serve as evidence for an
investigation into the Internet Research Agency (IRA) influence operations. (your tax dollars at work).
Cyber-evidence of Russian mind control
supporting the "Cybersecurity Gurus"
findings of 2016 election interference
targeting Blacks
Hillary Clinton lost the election because these "Cybersecurity Gurus" (a.k.a. Super Smarty Pants) figured out all by themselves how Trump won the election because "The Poors of the darker persuasion"" (always said with clinched teeth) got all mezmerized and stuff with all that fancy psyops crap on social media to vote for Trump.
Yup.
All Blacks changed their votes to Trump because Boris & Natasia made some really, intensely, philosophically deep memes.
"Cybersecurity Gurus" (a.k.a. Super Smarty Pants) know everything about Blacks because they live in the Sequestered Ivory Tower up there in Uber Rich Man's Land and came down to hand out to "The Elected Ones" these sheep dipped talking points for the upcoming legal actions under the Office of Special Counsel.
Yup.
Just listen to Michigan State Senator Marty Knollengerg because he knows everything about how "The Poors of the darker persuasion"" (always said with clinched teeth) cannot learn stuff.
The Russian influence campaign on social media in the 2016 election made an extraordinary effort to target African-Americans, used an array of tactics to try to suppress turnout among Democratic voters and unleashed a blizzard of activity on Instagram that rivaled or exceeded its posts on Facebook, according to a report produced for the Senate Intelligence Committee.
The report adds new details to the portrait that has emerged over the last two years of the energy and imagination of the Russian effort to sway American opinion and divide the country, which the authors said continues to this day.
“Active and ongoing interference operations remain on several platforms,” says the report, produced by New Knowledge, a cybersecurity company based in Austin, Tex., along with researchers at Columbia University and Canfield Research LLC. One continuing Russian campaign, for instance, seeks to influence opinion on Syria by promoting Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president and a Russian ally in the brutal conflict there.
The New Knowledge report is one of two commissioned by the Senate committee on a bipartisan
This report on how Blacks voted for Trump
was funded by the
U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee
basis. They are based largely on data about the Russian operations provided to the Senate by Facebook, Twitter and the other companies whose platforms were used.
The Russian influence campaign in 2016 was run by a St. Petersburg company called the Internet Research Agency, owned by a businessman, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, who is a close ally of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. Mr. Prigozhin and a dozen of the company’s employees were indicted last February as part of the investigation of Russian interference by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel.
Both reports stress that the Internet Research Agency created social media accounts under fake names on virtually every available platform. A major goal was to support Donald J. Trump, first against his Republican rivals in the presidential race, then in the general election, and as president since his inauguration.
Among the services the Russians have provided Mr. Trump is to join in and amplify his regular attacks on Mr. Mueller. Posing as fed-up Americans, the Internet Research Agency trolls have denounced the investigation of Russian election interference as a “weird conspiracy” pushed only by “liberal crybabies,” the New Knowledge report says.
One Facebook page, called “‘Merican Fury,” declared falsely that Mr. Mueller “worked with radical Islamic groups.” Another, “Back the Badge,” called James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director fired by Mr. Trump, “a dirty cop.”
"Russia made Blacks vote for Trump and you better believe me or else." said the Super Smarty Pants.
Creating accounts designed to pass as belonging to Americans, the Internet Research Agency spread its messages not only via Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, which have drawn the most attention, but also on YouTube, Reddit, Tumblr, Pinterest, Vine and Google+, among other platforms. Its attack on the United States used almost exclusively high-tech tools created by American companies.
The New Knowledge researchers discovered many examples of the Russian operators building an audience with one theme and then shifting to another, often more provocative, set of messages. For instance, an Instagram account called @army_of_jesus_ first posted in January 2015 images from “The Muppet Show,” then shifted to “The Simpsons” and by early 2016 became Jesus-focused. Multiple memes associated Jesus with Mr. Trump’s campaign and Satan with that of his rival, Hillary Clinton.
The Russian campaign was the subject of Senate hearings last year and has been widely scrutinized by academic experts. The new reports largely confirm earlier findings: that the campaign was designed to attack Mrs. Clinton, boost Mr. Trump and exacerbate existing divisions in American society.
"Vote Trump 2016 in Detroit" (more proof from the Super Smarty Pants that Russian memes made Blacks in Detroit vote for Trump in 2016.)
Americans, which is evident to anyone who examines
“The most prolific I.R.A. efforts on Facebook and Instagram specifically targeted black American communities and appear to have been focused on developing black audiences and recruiting black Americans as assets,” the report says. Using Gmail accounts with American-sounding names, the Russians recruited and sometimes paid unwitting American activists of all races to stage rallies and spread content, but there was a disproportionate pursuit of African-Americans, it concludes.
The report says that while “other distinct ethnic and religious groups were the focus of one or two Facebook Pages or Instagram accounts, the black community was targeted extensively with dozens.” In some cases, Facebook ads were targeted at users who had shown interest in particular topics, including black history, the Black Panther Party and Malcolm X. The most popular of the Russian Instagram accounts was @blackstagram, with 303,663 followers.
The Internet Research Agency also created a dozen websites disguised as African-American in origin, with names like blackmattersus.com, blacktivist.info, blacktolive.org and blacksoul.us. On YouTube, the largest share of Russian material covered the Black Lives Matter movement and police brutality, with channels called “Don’t Shoot” and “BlackToLive.”
The report does not seek to explain the heavy focus on African-Americans. But the Internet Research Agency’s tactics echo Soviet propaganda efforts from decades ago that often highlighted racism and racial conflict in the United States, as well as recent Russian influence operations in other countries that sought to stir ethnic strife.
Renee DiResta, one of the report’s authors and director of research at New Knowledge, said the Internet Research Agency “leveraged pre-existing, legitimate grievances wherever they could.” As the election effort geared up, the Black Lives Matter movement was at the center of national attention in the United States, so the Russian operation took advantage of it, she said — and added “Blue Lives Matter” material when a pro-police pushback emerged.
“Very real racial tensions and feelings of alienation exist in America, and have for decades,” Ms. DiResta said. “The I.R.A. didn’t create them. It exploits them.”
"Vote Trump 2016 in Detroit "
Of 81 Facebook pages created by the Internet Research Agency in the Senate’s data, 30 targeted African-American audiences, amassing 1.2 million followers, the report finds. By comparison, 25 pages targeted the political right and drew 1.4 million followers. Just seven pages focused on the political left, drawing 689,045 followers.
In response, the N.A.A.C.P. said it would not use Facebook or Instagram for a week and urged its social media followers and partners to do the same.
While the right-wing pages promoted Mr. Trump’s candidacy, the left-wing pages scorned Mrs. Clinton while promoting Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate. The voter suppression effort was focused particularly on Sanders supporters and African-Americans, urging them to shun Mrs. Clinton in the general election and either vote for Ms. Stein or stay home.
Whether such efforts had a significant effect is difficult to judge. Black voter turnout declined in 2016 for the first time in 20 years in a presidential election, but it is impossible to determine whether that was the result of the Russian campaign.
The New Knowledge report argues that the Internet Research Agency’s presence on Instagram has
been underestimated and may have been as effective or more effective than its Facebook effort. The report says there were 187 million engagements on Instagram — users “liking” or sharing the content created in Russia — compared with 76.5 million engagements on Facebook.
In 2017, as the American news media focused on the Russian operations on Facebook and Twitter, the Russian effort shifted strongly to Instagram, the report says.
The New Knowledge report criticizes social media companies for misleading the public.
“It is unclear whether these answers were the result of faulty or lacking analysis, or a more deliberate evasion,” the report says.
“Regrettably, it appears that the platforms may have misrepresented or evaded in some of their statements to Congress,” the report says, noting what it calls one false claim that specific population groups were not targeted by the influence operation and another that the campaign did not seek to discourage voting.
“It is unclear whether these answers were the result of faulty or lacking analysis, or a more deliberate evasion,” the report says.
The report suggests a grudging respect for the scale and creativity of Russian influence operations.
But the Russians were not eager to take credit for their own efforts.
After the election, the report says, the Internet Research Agency put up some 70 posts on Facebook and Instagram that mocked the claims that Russia had interfered in the election.
As we approach the joyous merriment of this winter holiday, I would like to give a very special, sacrificial offering in a Detroit, Michigan promulgation of propaganda, by the one and only Nolan Finley, to the Office of Special Counsel, Bob Mueller & Jeannie Rhee.
Michigan never warmed to Rick Snyder the way it should have. The Republican governor took over an economic wasteland and, through innovative, growth-focused leadership, made it one of America's great comeback stories.
He saved the state's largest city from sure ruin, lifted Michigan from the bottom of every business climate ranking and set a course for a fiscally sound future.
And yet Snyder will leave office with an approval rating lower than that of President Donald Trump, who couldn't be further away from the governor in either style or substance.
An easy answer to why Snyder isn't more celebrated is Flint. And certainly the water contamination crisis there called into question the governor's decision making, as well as his empathy. Coming as it did at the beginning of the 2016 presidential campaign, Snyder became an easy whipping boy for every Democratic politician, liberal activist and Hollywood know-it-all.
But even before Flint, Snyder struggled to keep his popularity numbers above water. Remember that in 2014, with Michigan's economy rebounding and Detroit's turnaround assured, Snyder won reelection by just a 4 percentage point margin against a poorly financed and unfocused opponent.
Snyder came to office via a coalition of Republicans, Independents and business-minded Democrats. In doing so, he became the first governor to move from the business world into the statehouse with no political stops in between since George Romney in 1962.
Democrats seemed to expect him to govern as a progressive, and turned away from Snyder when he signed many of the conservative bills generated by the Republican-led Legislature.
Republicans, by contrast, turned on him for not being conservative enough. Unlike most past governors, Snyder never became the head of his party, leaving the political games to those who better enjoyed them. Republican politicians talk about Snyder in language normally reserved for Democrats.
Yet in the business world, Snyder remains a hero because he delivered exactly what he promised: relentless, positive action to improve the competitiveness of Michigan. Consider the numbers:
As of October, Michigan hit its lowest unemployment rate since 2000. The 3.9 percent rate is the result of a growing economy and the addition of 560,000 private sector jobs in the past eight years.
In June, Snyder signed the 2019 budget, marking eight years in a row the state budget has reached a balanced spending plan months ahead of deadline.
The state's rainy-day fund has grown to more than $1 billion from just $2 million in 2011.
Snyder has steadily tackled long-term debt, reducing it by more than $20 billion. By around 2038, he estimates the billions in unfunded liabilities in the state's teacher pension system should be gone -- assuming a continued commitment to paying down these obligations.
In 2011, Snyder spearheaded the effort to get rid of the Michigan Business Tax, which was replaced with a corporate income tax that encourages job creation and investment.
And then there's Detroit. Without Rick Snyder, there would be no Motor City comeback.
The governor brilliantly directed the city -- kicking and screaming, by the way -- first through emergency management and then a bankruptcy crafted by him not just to settle a horrendous debt, but to give Detroiters a fighting chance to rebuild.
Those who blame the Snyder-ordered emergency management of Flint for nearly ruining that city, must also recognize emergency management saved Detroit.
We visited Snyder in the darkest hours of the Flint crisis, when calls for his resignation were ringing through the Capitol. His name was fast becoming synonymous with heartless Republicanism, and his family was being shouted out of restaurants.
Heartless is far from what we saw in that interview. Snyder was visibly shaken by what had happened in Flint, and he wasn't hiding his emotion. He promised to take responsibility and committed to making things right for the people who had been harmed by government's failures. And he followed through.
Flint's water tainted water lines are nearly all replaced, affected children are receiving ongoing attention and businesses are showing interest in the city.
Set aside the balance sheet of Snyder's achievements/failures. Measure him instead by the way he conducted himself in office. He was unique in his constant civility. We never heard the governor engage in a personal attack. Never heard him disparage his opponents. Never saw him waver in his commitment to stay positive. Even during Flint, when his character was being assassinated by those who didn't even know him, he never lashed out in anger.
We expect that Snyder will become a much more popular governor over time. And we expect Michigan will miss him even sooner.
750.249 Forgery of records and other instruments; uttering and publishing; exception.
Sec. 249.
(1) A person who utters and publishes as true a false, forged, altered, or counterfeit record, instrument, or other writing listed in section 248 knowing it to be false, altered, forged, or counterfeit with intent to injure or defraud is guilty of a felony punishable by imprisonment for not more than 14 years.
(2) This section does not apply to a scrivener's error.
Nolan Finley waiting to see how many hits he gets on his greatest work of retribution art.
As he sat lorn, for years, wringing his sweaty hands, covered in his own, lustful-stained chimera of finally being recognized as a man of honor, alas, Nolan Finley is still, just a troll.
Due to the fact that Nolan Finley has a history of benefitting from unidentified sources, to spew masticated wads of 60-second opinion pieces, devoid of any verification, I thought I would memorialize Nolan in his grandest act of a vapid utterance, against his archnemisis, John Conyers, Jr.
John Conyers made the right choice. Faced with a grueling inquiry by the House Ethics Committee that would surely have damaged his legacy and perhaps destroyed his remaining health, the Detroit Democrat heeded the urgings of his own party’s leadership and Tuesday retired immediately from Congress.
In doing so, the old civil rights warrior avoided a fight he couldn’t have won.
The volume of complaints against him from former staffers who claimed the congressman sexually harassed them over the course of several years was too great. His accusers were too credible. And his personal history made the case against him too easy to believe.
A decade ago, Conyers was hauled before the ethics committee to face allegations that he misused his office staff by forcing them to do his personal errands, including baby-sitting and chauffeuring his children. He got off with a slap on the wrist.
Conyers’ behavior didn’t change. But the times have.
There was no way Congress, in a year when sexual harassment in the workplace has become the dominant national issue, would have allowed him to again walk away unscathed.
This had nothing to do with race, as his supporters contended in rising to his defense at a Detroit rally Tuesday. Men of all races and all backgrounds are being held to account in this massive pushback against sexual harassment. Even the most powerful — particularly the most powerful — are having to pay the consequences for their misdeeds.
But unlike those others, who were gone as soon as they were accused, Conyers actually had a shot at due process, given his special status as an elected official. The ethics committee would have investigated the allegations, weighed the evidence and allowed him to answer his accusers.
But at age 88 and in frail mental and physical health, the process may well have killed him. And in the end, his colleagues would have handed him his hat.
What Congress member would risk casting a vote to hold Conyers harmless, when every day men are toppling from the top echelons of private industry for accusations of similar behavior? Even Congress isn’t aloof from the zero-tolerance mood of the people.
Conyers faced at a minimum censure by his colleagues, and quite possibly expulsion.
That would be no way to end a remarkable 53-year career.
It is understandable that many Detroiters are distressed or angry by what happened to Conyers.
They sent him to Congress at a time when African-Americans had little political power in this country, and he gave them a strong voice, helping lead every major battle of the civil rights era. He is understandably one of their heroes.
History will now record that this civil rights icon retired by his own choice, and was not censured or ousted by his colleagues. Given the despicable allegations against him, some may see that outcome as too lenient.
But it was the best result for Congress, and for John Conyers, a member who for a very long time served his people well and honorably. But he clung to the power and perks of office for far too long — long enough for his sins to catch up with him.
Being quite familiar with Mr. Finley's pontification in the public affairs of Detroit, I have taken a personal fascination in the odious descent of his political punditry.
Some of these elected officials were murdered and some died of natural causes; unfortunately, Mr. Finley failed to identify how he desires the undertaker to "meet" Congressman John Conyers, Jr.
It is this failure which has raised Mr. Finley to meet the bar of besmirching his profession as a journalist.
One may attack a political party, the work of an elected official, or even the personal life of politician if it is juicy enough, but when anyone, especially a public figure such as Mr. Finley, wishes death upon another human being who happens to also be my dearest friend, I take personal issue.
Then again, Mr. Finley has been readily fashioning his career to become a sensationalistic, comedic journalistic hack who definitely triggers big hits and generates lots of backlinks for The Detroit News advertisers.
I demand you, #NolanFinley retract your wish of death for #Conyers
I wrote the following some years ago and thought it appropriate to repost at this time.
The issues surrounding unruly town hall meetings and angry mobs were addressed over 200 years ago in the Federalist Papers, specifically #9, Hamilton and #10 Madison.
Hamilton #9: The utility of a Confederacy, as well to suppress faction and to guard the internal tranquillity of States, as to increase their external force and security, is in reality not a new idea. It has been practiced upon in different countries and ages, and has received the sanction of the most approved writers on the subject of politics.
What Hamilton basically says is that an insurgent faction disrupts consolidation and consensus of groups, better known as a republic. This idea was expounded and refined in Madison #10.
Madison identified the "inner tranquility" of the consolidation and consensus of groups as the "majority". He further spoke of the futility of non-peaceful protests as they disregarded established legislative processes, having elected government representatives.
"Men of factious tempers, of local prejudices, or of sinister designs, may, by intrigue, by corruption, or by other means, first obtain the suffrages, and then betray the interests, of the people."
Historically, civil disobedience only works when functioning under the policy of peace. These protests are not peaceful in language or activities, an early presentation of failure of the insurgence.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise therof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.The Bill of Rights: First Amendment
The key word is "peace". Once this tenet of the First Amendment is violated, peace, the government is empowered to protect the people, pursuant to the General Welfare Clause in the U.S. Constitution. The following is an excerpt of Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution of the United States, called the General Welfare Clause:
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;
Violence, be it verbal, economic, emotional or physical, becomes grounds for government intervention, or rather the calling of the police to maintain the peace. When this happens you have an insurrection, pursuant to the General Welfare Clause. Under this light, health care as commerce, or rather Universal Health Care, is seen as a "provision for the common defense social disease, meaning maintainability of individual and social health, becoming fungible with the temporal terminology of General Welfare.
Quintessentially, Universal Health Care is one in the same with the Common Defense and General Welfare of the people of the United States of America. Here is a visual model for greater understanding:
