Imagine … the American public being divided over immigration and race … How could that be possible without Russian trolls?
Webster’s dictionary: troll – verb: To fish by running a baited line behind a moving boat; noun: A supernatural creature of Scandinavian folklore.
Russian Internet trolls are trying to stir up even more controversy over National Football League players crouching on one knee (“taking a “knee”) during the national anthem, said Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), warning that the United States should expect such divisive efforts to escalate in the next election.
“We watched even this weekend,” Lankford said, “the Russians and their troll farms, and their Internet folks, start hash-tagging out ‘take a knee’ and also hash-tagging out ‘Boycott NFL’.” The Russians’ goal, he said, was “to try to raise the noise level in America to try to make a big issue, an even bigger issue as they’re trying to just push divisiveness in the country. We’ve continued to be able to see that. We will see that again in our election time.”
Russia “causing divisiveness” is a common theme of American politicians and media. Never explained is WHY? What does Russia have to gain by Americans being divided? Do they think the Russians are so juvenile? Or are the Americans the childish ones?
CNN on October 12 claimed that Russia uses YouTube, Tumblr and the Pokemon Go mobile game “to exploit racial tensions and sow discord among Americans,” while the Washington Post (October 12) reported that “content generated by Russian operatives was not aimed only at influencing the election. Many of the posts and ads intended to divide Americans over hot-button issues such as immigration or race.”
Imagine … the American public being divided over immigration and race … How could that be possible without Russian trolls?
The Post (October 9) reported that the Russian trolling operation resides “in a large gray building north of the St. Petersburg city center … There, young people work 12-hour shifts and make between $800 and $1,000 a month, “an attractive wage for former students and young people. It is impossible to get inside the building, and there are multiple entrances, making it hard to tell who is a troll and who is not.”
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest are amongst the many Internet sites that we are told have been overrun by Russian trolls. The last named is a site that specializes in home decor, fashion and recipes. Have the Russians gone mad? Or are the American accusations the kind of stuff that is usually called – dare I say it? – “propaganda”?
“How much the trolls affected the outcome of the U.S. election is unclear,” the Post had to admit. “But their omnipresence is evident on Twitter and in the comments section of publications like the Washington Post, where trolls can be found criticizing news stories, lambasting other posters and accusing one another of being trolls.”
Are you starting to chuckle?
At one point the Post reported that Facebook “identified more than 3000 advertisements purchased in a Russian-orchestrated campaign to influence the American public’s views and exploit divisions around contentious issues.” And Congressional investigators said that some of the Facebook ad purchases had “obvious Russian fingerprints, including Russian addresses and payments made in rubles”, and that “accounts traced to a shadowy Russian Internet company had purchased at least $100,000 in ads during the 2016 election season.”
However, at other times the Post told us that Facebook had pointed out that “most of the ads made no explicit reference in favor of Trump or Clinton,” and that some ads were purchased after the election. We’ve been told, moreover, that Facebook Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos’s team “had searched extensively for evidence of foreign purchases of political advertising but had come up short.”
In any event, we have to wonder: What political savvy concerning American elections and voters do the Russians have that the Democratic and Republican parties don’t have?
I have read numerous references to these ads but have yet to come across a single one that quotes the exact wording of even one advertisement. Is that not odd?
To add to the oddness, in yet another Washington Post article (September 28) we are informed that “some of the ads promoted African American rights groups, including Black Lives Matter, while others suggested those same groups posed a growing political threat, according to people familiar with the material.”
Politico, a Democratic-Party-leaning journal, reports that Russian-funded Facebook ads backed Green Party candidate Jill Stein, Democrat Bernie Sanders, and Republican Donald Trump.
Who and what is behind these peculiar goings-on?
More fun and games: the Department of Homeland Security in September notified Virginia and 20 other states about Russian efforts to hack their election systems in 2016.
Earlier this year, UK Foreign Minister Boris Johnson declared, apparently without embarrassment: “We have no evidence the Russians are actually involved in trying to undermine our democratic processes at the moment. We don’t actually have that evidence. But what we do have is plenty of evidence that the Russians are capable of doing that.” At a September 27 Congressional hearing, FBI Director Christopher Wray joined this proud chorus, testifying: “One of the things we know is that the Russians and Russian state actors are trying to influence other elections in other countries.” Mr. Wray forgot to name any of the other countries and the assembled Congressmembers forgot to ask him for any names.
Perhaps the main reason for questioning charges of Russian interference in the 2016 US election is that Russian President Putin would have been risking that the expected winner, Hillary Clinton, would have been handed a personal reason to take revenge on him and his country. But that’s just being logical and rational, two qualities Cold War II has no more use for than Cold War I did.
This article is excerpted from William Blum’s “Anti-Empire Report #152” at WilliamBlum.org.
These accusations of divisive Russian adds on Facebook and Twitter are quit literally taking politics to the humor pages. So Antifa attacking a peaceful march by the alt-Right protesting the removal of General Lee’s statue from a park in Charlottesville and Antifa preventing a talk by Milo at the UC Berkely with riots is all the consequence of Russian-induced divisiveness? At least some Antifa demonstrators admitted on video that they get paid by Soros for protesting.
Soros wants an open society, without borders, governed by the US as world government. I.e. hegemony accomplished. Soros is a good friend of Hillary and Obama and the Democrats. Hillary and, most ironically, the ACLU are for open borders. How do open borders protect the civil rights of US citizens? Ironically, far from the Russians, it was the Democrats who produced the divisions by giving preference to illegal immigrants, blacks, brown people and just about everybody except white Americans. As could be expected, the counter movement came fast and decisively. It elected Trump.
As to Russia – it has been just about everywhere a force for reconciliation. In Syria, Afghanista, Libya, in South America: Russia always tried to mediate, to bring the opposing factions together to find a compromise. It has spent 25 years trying to reconcile the differences between east and west until it got convinced that the US will never accept it and treat it as an equal. Since then it moved closer to China and now builds, together with China, the grand New Silk Road integrated Eurasian market from Lisbon to Vldadivostok and to Beijing and Shanghai and beyond. While the US was bogged down in useless wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Honduras, Russia and China built the first part of a vast network of trains, pipelines and roads for an integrated trade space spanning the entire continent from Europe to Asia.
Waking up from its war induced slumber, the US started to recognize that it might in fact lose economic hegemony. The Chinese gold backed Yuan – the gold backed Dinar that Qaddafi wanted to introduce as pan-African currency is what triggered the war on Libya and his murder – is designed to become a new reserve currency, that may in fact displace the petrodollar in time. China is neither vindictive nor destructive. It goes along its plans silently, and slowly enough to give the US time to pay off its debt. World trade would only lose from the sudden destruction of the US economy. But if the US will not pay back its debt, it risks an economic meltdown from which China will be largely insulated, while the US economy and its political system will implode. The US understands that full well. And this menacing fact, that forbids full steam hegemony, is at the bottom of the current Russiagate and the accusations that Russia is dividing the US people with subversive adds. Even the “cute puppies” page that Russia put on Facebook to calm down the divided American souls was interpreted by D.C. as the first step to lure the Americans into the abyss.
China depends on Russia for its land route to the northern EU and on Turkey and Iran for the southern branch. The first trains started running last year and trains go to Tehran now. Which explains the US hostility to both, Russia and Iran. What Mersheimer pointed out some year of two ago, that the US should seek alliance with China because otherwise Russia and China would move together, was disregarded, but that has happened now. To defend Iran – and BRI – against US regime change action, Russia and Iran and Russia and China signed defense agreements. The US is trying belatedly to split Russia and China apart. That is the purpose of Russiagate: to vilify Russia so that China should doubt its dependability and switch allegiance to the US, all the while also preparing the US public for more war – on Russia and Iran – hence the division sowed on social media as a distraction from the war plans and the moral and financial bankruptcy of the US government. Hence the US accusing Russia and Iran of aggression in Syria and intending to sanction the Iranian Quds force to then proclaim Iran as a promoter of terrorism in the Middle East. But the US and its coalition are the ones illegally fighting a dirty proxy war in Syria, upset because Russia and Iran refused a Libya 2.
The ads in question – assuming they in fact exist, which is not clear since nobody is allowed to see them – would have been placed by the CIA and Stratfor and likely Soros’ Open Society NGO’s, which all do of course have the capacity to produce Russian addresses and pay in Rubles. The forensics of the Guccifer 2.0 file, executed by VIPS (Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity) showed the file to have been made during regular eastern US daytime hours. And it showed that the download speed exceeded what would have been possible via Internet hack and that the Russian appearance was made with a simple template bought from the Internet, confirming that the file was a fake. The forensics done on any such addresses of supposedly Russian ads would likely show the same. Hence the secrecy.
While half of the US public is occupied with fantasies of impeaching Trump based on Mueller’s investigation and the first criminal complaints filed, the CIA is busy setting up Russia and Iran for destruction – that is unless both Iran and Russia understand and counteract. Hence the pulling out of the ICPOA that will lead to re-imposing the sanctions to destroy the Iranian economy. Iran will obviously not negotiate its missile defense program. But new sanctions will not have the same effect as old sanctions. Russia and China built a competing SWIFT system and sanctions will not likely be able to disrupt trade in Yuan and Rubles or barter goods. Russia is creating an Internet Ruble convertible to and from Bitcoins. it won’t need US banks or SWIFT to pay. Europe may be so frustrated with US actions that it will move towards Russia. That will mean lifting of EU Russia sanctions. In other words, the world is moving away from the US. It had enough of US hegemony wars. The EU portion of NATO will refuse a war on Russia that would destroy Europe as well. And the US will be left as Rumpelstilzchen to tear out its own leg.
If and when people start to understand these connections, they will then understand that Trump proposed the right agenda/policies on the stump, policies that could in fact have re-integrated the US into world trade, including the BRI trade zone and that the Dems and their buddies in the deep state and in Israel prevented it, preferring to destroy the US as we know it rather than accept a change of policy. Assange published the names of 6 Republican senators on Twitter who pursuant to an email from Hillary, were bribed by the Dems to go against Trump. The destruction of Trump’s peace based agenda is tragic.