“Trained and untrained operators alike are beta-testing tools and tactics on human minds, deliberately or intuitively. Information weapons are intangible. But people aim them, and people are the target. It's time we take them seriously. The immediate costs are already visible in America. The long-term costs will be devastating. One need only look to Stalin's campaigns of internal psychological terror waged in captive nations to understand the price can be inconceivably high. And we're all paying the price already, whether we know it or not.” — Molly K. McKew warned in 2018. Did anyone listen?
Even though you may block and avoid them, they will keep bubbling up from the swamp.
Anything I touch on below was used and will be used in future, to obfuscate, divide, create culture and racial war whether real or perceived and to interfere with elections. It is imperative that you keep in touch with ways you may be duped or manipulated. tRUMP was able to dupe more and more people as time went on… not less... And new methods are being developed as I write.
EG: “Lawyer” Lin Wood is a crazed MAGA tool and a fool, and yet, people revere him because they think he has God on his side in fighting for the MAGA “oppressed” like poor little MAGA hero teen Nocholas Sandmann. Here he is a VIDEO of him preaching that ‘the Clintons, the Obamas, the Bidens, and the Bushes are all involved in sex trafficking’ and that Q is the truth.
UGH!
A new report is out by the Soufan Center, a New York-based research firm focused on national security threats. They found that almost 1/5 of the QAnon Facebook posts (33k of 166.8k) last year, originated overseas… including of course, China and Russia. And there are way more Q-quisling than we knew.
Foreign-based actors, principally in China and Russia, are spreading online disinformation rooted in QAnon conspiracy theories, fueling a movement that has become a mounting domestic terrorism threat, according to new analysis of online propaganda by a security firm.
2019 tRUMP’s officials and and arm of the DOJ sent out racist and white supremacy articles and relayed conspiracy website information to Federal employees.
“They also regularly delivered content from partisan publications touting anti-immigration rhetoric and conspiracy theories. Among these publications: the Western Journal, a hyperpartisan publisher whose founder once questioned if then-presidential candidate Barack Obama was Muslim, and the Epoch Times, a newspaper associated with the Chinese Falun Gong movement and whose related media properties have backed QAnon, a conspiracy theory claiming a group of high-ranking officials known as the ‘Deep State’ is subverting President Donald Trump’s goals.”
But, the NYT and WaPo? They were discontinued along with other MSM papers that had been traditionally delivered to Government offices …
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If you are Canadian and got Epoch Times in the mail unsolicited, please, sign the petition here. It is disinformation being sent out as spam by Canada Post.
If you are American, did you know Epoch Times is run out of the USA and other countries as well? it was founded in Georgia and moved to New York when it became popular as a way for the Chinese to bypass Chinese censorship.
But, it is not innocuous print! After making a plethora of lies about COVID 19 and the virus origin, when Joe Biden won the election, “the newspaper reconstituted itself into a vehicle for esoteric voter-fraud allegations. In Georgia, heading into the two January special elections for the U.S. Senate, people affiliated with the newspaper materialized to stick copies under car windshields.”
Their ads are constant on Youtube and one of their channels… is… wait for it ... Facts Matter: “devoted to the notion that the election is not over; in less than two months, the channel has amassed more than 400,000 subscribers.” (More on this later)
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Much of this is old… but the message surely isn’t
Sure you think of Fox when you think of “faux news, but there so many more…
Fake News Analysis | 'Fake news' and the Trumpian threat to democracy.
Disinformation works. Playing on people’s prejudice and ignorance works. Sending fake ads to target the vulnerable and poorly educated works.
30 years of republican smear campaigns with RWNJ radio/FOX/Limbaughesque liars and screamers on talk radio works. Repeating fake talking points works. Putting the fear of God or the “other” into people who are biased and bigoted to reinforce their hate WORKS…
How well does disinformation and propaganda work?
See the video HERE, sound off
Newsmax
Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy, who is a friend of tRUMP, all tRUMP/MAGA all the time… Ruddy said he hoped tRUMP would be on Newsmax "quite a bit after he leaves the White House", but insisted he did not want Newsmax to become "Trump TV".
tRUMP fluffer from Newsmax…Wayne Dupree.
Wayne Dupree said tRUMP did an amazing job of handling the coronavirus…
Newsmax, along with all tRUMP’s big donors and cronies , got PPP meant for struggling businesses…
Sinclair
Here is a reminder video of Sinclair making all of its anchors read a script that says “other “ fake news is a “danger to our democracy.” Yes Sinclair, you are.
Sinclair Broadcast Group owns local news stations across the US — find out whether your local station is one of them, by state. Sinclair is now in 72% of Americans homes, sometimes with a monopoly.
OANN: One America News Network
Q was thrilled that tRUMP dissed Fox and told people not to watch… OANN s fighting hard to be the new FOX fake news. “Nearly all of OANN’s 24-hours of daily programming is centered at an anchor desk, with a polished TV anchor delivering headlines and introducing packaged segments in the time-honored manner of Edward R. Murrow or Walter Cronkite. But there’s a twist: The segments, the interviews, the words the anchors are speaking and even the crawl at the bottom of the screen are a slurry of fake news mixed with genuine reporting; internet conspiracy theories blended with far-right rhetoric and drizzled with undiluted Kremlin propaganda.”
Some OANN broadcasters and a producer quit during the tRUMP reign, citing “This is damaging to our careers moving forward, and I think we're all in agreement with that...” But their quitting meant they left the truly hardcore MAGA to avidly spew lies and continue to say there are “serious doubts about who’s actually president,” and blame Antifa for the Capitol attack. They also call tRUMP the “president” and refer to The President as merely Biden… One of those who spoke out, Marty Golingan, was fired yesterday…
Chanel Rion, who floated the theory that Covid-19 was created in a lab in North Carolina and then smuggled to China works for OAN. VIDEO and thread of Chanel being a ringer for WH press conferences: HERE She and her past are just to weird to leave out.
All the dirt on Chanel’s fiancé that she met at CIA school, and dad … All three of them have changed their names. So, how did tRUMP’s favorite White House correspondent pass security checks?
Rion’s fiancé really is a combat vet … also worked in a “Defense Intelligence Agency and served eight years in the Navy, as an intelligence specialist. He is a combat veteran who served in Iraq. … In 2017 interviews with Missouri media, Sykes admitted that his defense consultancy, Talosorion, did not have any clients.” W T A F?
Disinformation trolls from Russia , Macedonia , China and America, helped get tRUMP elected
Disinfomedia
There are idiots who like money as a motive, regardless of political bent. This POS says he is a Democrat who hated Hillary. Coler's company, Disinfomedia, owns many faux news sites — he won't say how many. But he says his is one of the largest fake-news businesses out there, which makes him a sort of godfather of the industry.
At any given time, Coler says, he has between 20 and 25 writers. And it was one of them who wrote the story in the "Denver Guardian" that an FBI agent who leaked Clinton emails was killed. Coler says that over 10 days the site got 1.6 million views. He says stories like this work because they fit into existing right-wing conspiracy theories.
Macedonian Fake news machine
Young people earn thousands a day making you click on their fake "news" and provocative propaganda. Their livelihood is in the weak minded and easily duped.
Macedonian fake news machines linked to former FOX exec, Ken LaCorte, who admits his sleazy sites are clickbait to make money! Conservative Edition News and Liberal Edition News have only one thing in common: Both have been carefully curated to inflame America’s culture wars. “The sites are the work of Ken LaCorte, the former Fox News executive who was accused of killing a story about President Trump’s affair with Stormy Daniels, the pornographic film actress, before the 2016 election,” wrote The Times.
Macedonian Fake troll machine: The young Macedonians who run these sites say they don't care about Donald Trump. They are responding to straightforward economic incentives: As Facebook regularly reveals in earnings reports, a US Facebook user is worth about four times a user outside the US. The fraction-of-a-penny-per-click of US display advertising — a declining market for American publishers — goes a long way in Veles. Several teens and young men who run these sites told BuzzFeed News that they learned the best way to generate traffic is to get their politics stories to spread on Facebook — and the best way to generate shares on Facebook is to publish sensationalist and often false content that caters to Trump supporters. As a result, this strange hub of pro-Trump sites in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia is now playing a significant role in propagating the kind of false and misleading content.
Fake engagement phones and fake ad traffic This is just the beginning..
Click farm of 8,000 mobile phones in Shandong province China. People use it to inflate posts views to attract advertisers, boost video views, and game the search results on e-commerce platforms. (Adding fake reviews, downloading crappy aps to game the results, fake follow, and more) Please check out the video HERE
Here is a close up of Chinese click farm phones simulating human behavior, scrolling through content at a natural reading speed before liking or sharing. Please check out the video HERE
AI and deep fake videos are already happening.
Fake faces on other bodies and voices attached to fake videos. The weak-minded or just plain MAGA dumb are going to be duped. As it gets better we may all be.
Once you start looking at the online accounts and the trolling, you can see most of it leads to fake "news" organizations run by Russia, or people around the world duping the weak minded and making living, and click bait that garners students and young people who are greedy and have no morals. It is a game, but a dangerous one, and it helped tRUMP enormously. Is there a cyber crime unit looking into it? Of course not because most roads lead to tRUMP!
There is a cyber war on truth, real journalism and democracies
Here are some examples to Twitter bots spreading the same fake news with different accounts. These people have been tracking them and are reporting but they crop up like whackamoles, and this thread is one example: The story of The Voty Twitter Botnet and The Attack on Senator Al Franken by the Alt-Right Army.
Fake resist
These Twitter members were all named "the resistance" but are Twitter bots aimed at having you visit their site.
A MAGAt setting up fake accounts to dupe Democrats out of money should be charged with fraud . It was started by a man who runs a pro-tRUMP PAC.
More on EPOCH TIMES … the same as a Russian troll farm, but worse.
tRUMP acknowledges anyone who supports him and denigrates those who do not. With fake “news” Epoch Times it seems to meld with what Q has to offer. Anti-communist, pro-tRUMP, conspiracies… and religious extremism playing a huge role. After tRUMP was elected, all the disinformation story writers were fired, so they have obviously hired more out of work writers to prepare for the 2020 election.
EPOCH TIMES spent 1.5 million on Facebook ads in 6 months… AND PHYSICAL MAIL AS WELL! They will just keep buying via other means. Facebook took Rubles in 2015, so we know they do not care unless they are caught.
“Li has railed against what he called the wickedness of homosexuality, feminism and popular music while holding that he is a god-like figure who can levitate and walk through walls.”
Epoch Times is hoping for end times… and they wanted tRUMP to bring it. They may still back him or look for a new tRUMPian to back. Lara tRUMP had a meeting with editors of Epoch times in tRUMP Tower ! Holy F’ING HELL!
*The Epoch Times' senior editorial staff, sometimes the largest video publisher on all of social media, quietly runs one of the largest Qanon channels on YouTube. In April 2019 they outranked any real news source!
It has over 33 million views, including “13 BLOODLINES & their Diabolical End Game.”
Trolls/hackers
Q and 8 chan were pulled offline. That meant they had to find an alternate host. Once they did, they changed to 8KUN. Since then, they have been embattled and Parler took a lot of their users during the break. Parler is back up and looking for more Q Qrazies to recruit…
And as of yesterday...Apple is allowing Parler back to its app store… of course. Why ? They promise they have changed…
sigh…
If you are unaware of 8Chan/8Kun, you are lucky, but you really should have a basic understanding of tRUMP’s main troll base and Q. Ron Watkins the son of a pig farmer from the Phillipines who owns the 4/Chan/8Chan/8Kun PeePee frog trolls servers … and lots of porn sites. Ron’s dad, Jim Watkins is also likely the person known as Q being his son outed him. Q is supposed to be some high level government employee… so this is funny… but not when you see how powerful they have become.
Ron Watkins gave some info to to Ron Johnson and Jim Jordan after the election, to suppisedly prove ”The Big Lie, ” and says he is a “Large Systems Data Analyst” and has information about Dominion software. HE IS THE ONE that tRUMP’s lawyers are used as their “expert” … even though he was last doing wood working in between owning porn sites and duping Americans. I can’t add any of the URL, as his Twitter has been removed. You cannot discount him though. He saw how much money the Kochs et al give to TPUSA and Project Veritas, and he wants a piece of that…
Q : Into The Storm,is the new 6-part QAnon docu-series on Netflix and can be streamed from HBOMAX. HERE is a good review.
Many PePe/Kek trolls have now become Groypers. Groypers are mostly under the umbrella of Nick Fuentes, and are what trolls become when they are willing to show their faces … called “larping” or live action role playing. Nick and many showed up at the January 6 riot, but it is as of yet unknown how many entered the building. It is a group of anti-Semitic neo-Nazi alt-right women and who hide their racism in “irony.”
Saying it was all a joke, buffoonery, irony, “just kidding” is their way of attracting teens and POS adults who think such action are funny and “edgy.” The use of absurdity was also used by the Klan…
"Sometimes, mischievous boys who want to have some fun go on a masquerading frolic to scare the negroes," testified U.S. Rep. John H. Christy of Georgia in the early 1870s. Christy insisted that stories of klan attacks were "exaggerated." In fact, he claimed, the group did not exist at all. Frantz said there were also documented instances in the Reconstruction era of white Northerners dressing up in klan robes as a supposedly boundary-pushing "joke."
Foreign/Russian trolls in 2016 are much more relevant now…
Disinformation experts told NBC News that the goal of the inauthentic accounts is to highlight and inflame existing tensions to destabilize America, a strategy also used by Russia’s disinformation campaign leading up to the 2016 election. “The real goal is to get the conflict off Twitter, to get it into the streets,” Philip Howard, director of the Oxford Internet Institute.
Bait from right wing troll … debate but de-bait (changing the goal posts)
False flag fakers
They don’t usually make the news as they are disguised and work in the crowds and are likely getting better at it.. but.. the media is starved of crises and will happily shout out even the fake events …
RW trolls make a fake Facebook post pretending to be violent antifa, and only RW arseholes show.
One militia member showed how to take down a bad guy with a gun, “Blood Spilled At Gettysburg Anti-Antifa Rally…When Militia Member Shoots Himself in the Leg.”
tRUMP’s "troll army" and the “digital Army” led by Flynn …
Brought you Brett Kavanaugh and the Information Terrorists Trying to Reshape America, like Gamergate losers and Roger Stone, mike Cernovich, Milo yiannopoulos, Prosobiec, Chuck Johnson, Alex Jones and hundreds more…
RWNJ trolls like Cassandra Fairbanks and Mike Cernovich from gamergate (both who somehow acquired WH press passes under tRUMP) fueled their followers with lies. Followers who were already, or destined to
become, white nationalists, anti-feminists, neo-Nazis, PEPE frog KeK trolls, Q-Quislings, Meme and conspiracy-loving freaks from 4 and 8 chan who are basically conspiracy nutters, people with depression and loneliness and many with autism being so many profess en masse to be autistic (Aspergers) ...hence the overuse of the term “normies.”
You may think you know where your children and grand children are when they are at home, but do you? Really?
QAnon and Parler
I had a QAnon post in the Queue, but stopped it from being published because it rehashed what several other people were adding at that time. If you are still not aware, Netflix has a 6-part docu-series on QAnon called Q: Into the Storm that can also be streamed on HBO. Q may be waning because a few people feel let down by tRUMP since Jan 06, but there are plenty of others to take up the mantle. See Lin Wood video above, MT Greene, Gosar, My Pillow guy spending millions on his own documentary of him whining and saying WOW run over and over again on Newsmax…
Although I wrote about both in a joking manner, neither should be discounted. Loser in Any Language is Still a Loser, a Failure, a Flunkee; Plus Parler, Perfect Place for Putzes.
And here: Did You Know MAGAs "Know" Everything, & tRUMP & Q-quislings are the"News" Now? FAKE NEWS!
The future is looking greene… for a party that embraces white identity and nativism.
Conveniently for Greene, it is outlandish behavior, not legislative success, that her supporters value: On April 10, she announced that she had raised $3.2 million in the first quarter, which is a record in fundraising for a House freshman during an off-year election quarter.
[Emphasis mine]
Facebook/Project Alamo
Facebook got voter data info on 85 million Americans from tRUMP's campaign to make 100 ads a day to target and Psych op America in 2016. Here, Theresa Hong and project “alamo”, tRUMP’s “voice” on Facebook tell you how, "Without Facebook, we wouldn't have won."
Zuckerberg even admitted there was overlap between Russia ads and the Trump Campaign, but it was not significant, he says. How would he know. The ads disappeared once they were clicked on. Facebook also recommended Russian propaganda to users. I am sure that was also “insignificant.”
Cambridge Analytica harvested data on 50 Million people and had data on 230 Million from Facebook. CA used the data to spread disinformation to sway the outcome of 2016 elections. I have more on that here: Collusion Timelines : Assange, Wikileaks, Cambridge Analytica, Stone, Rohrabacher, tRUMP, Don Jr. and in a 67 page file that has thousands of URLs.
Kellyanne Conway said it best. They have "alternative facts."
HOWEVER…
There are facts and only facts, which are TRUTH and anything else is lies, propaganda, misinformation and fake news.
At Kansas City rally, tRUMP said: "Just remember, what you are seeing and what you are reading is not what's happening." Don’t be that guy!
Read that last URL as it reminds that Putin wanted tRUMP and worked hard to interfere with the election.
REPORTER: Did you want President Trump to win the election and did you direct any of your officials to help him do that?
PUTIN: Yes, I wanted him to win. Because he talked about bringing the U.S. Russia relationship back to normal.
All reference to that exchange between Mr Mason and the Russian leader has been omitted from the official White House transcript. In the official record it doesn't exist.
[Emphasis mine]
tRUMP defied the “President’s Act” which requires all records from the President be kept and achived on January 20… and it is just another forgotten act of corruption. The act defines those records as the property of the American people, but only if they are preserved.
FAke News Monger and gaslighter...
tRUMP lashes out with “fake news” when someone asks him a question he does not want to answer. EG: tRUMP to Philip Rucker after he asks him if he’s irresponsibly hawking unproven coronavirus treatments… "I'm the president and you're fake news"
Hopefully, the worst fake news monger himself is gone, and will not return to darken the oval office! Sadly, that still leaves ...
Manufactured confusion
It is nothing new, but with the internet, it becomes salable in an instant. In a meme. Via a clickbait headline. Via sick and regressive “leaders” like tRUMP, McConnell, Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz and most outspoken of the GQP. It is the stuff from which social media ”experts” who work in marketing AND on campaigns, are made...
Today’s drumbeat happens online. The goal is no longer just to go straight to the news media. It’s to first create a world of content and then to push the term through to the news media at the right time so that people search for that term and receive specific content. Terms like caravan, incel, crisis actor. By exploiting the data void, or the lack of viable information, media manipulators can help fragment knowledge and seed doubt.
danah boyd
PS: That is how the term criminal conspiracy with Russia was switched for “collusion” —> which is not a criminal term at all …
The difference between terrorism and other acts of violence matters because terrorism — regardless of how it’s defined around the world — is considered far more serious as a threat to national security and will provoke a more aggressive government response.
It is also a term often used to influence public opinion.
“If Americans and others are more afraid of terrorism, they’re going to vote in a certain way,” Mr. Kurzman said. “There’s going to be a sense of insecurity that other acts of violence don’t often generate.”
If you accept the core definition of terrorism as ‘the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims ,’ then all of the above apply. The propaganda and misinformation being bombarded on by Foreign entities and by Americans and Canadians right here at home ... are psych ops; an attack on your brain… to "Persuade, Change, Influence," and that is truly terrifying.
While researching this, I found an incredible source of information.
Even though you may be bored because I suck at writing stories, please, take note of this page that gives you access to an impressive list of brilliant writers who expound on the topics I merely touched upon: SHADOWLAND, via The Atlantic. The future depends upon informed and aware citizens. Please pledge to be one.
Spread the truth and use guides to learn where fake news is coming from:
More from Politifact on Fake news:
Fake news ads and fake “news” sites
PS: This story may seem long, but it is but a mere spit in the 0cean. The network of RWNJ radio/spin radio… that Rush Limbaugh proved was a lucrative way to make a grift-living, (And to garner the highest civilian award medal in the land)… is as vast and effective as it was decades ago.
So, to anyone who did not believe Hillary that the RWNJs have a ‘vast right wing political machine’ that everyone denied existed for 35 years… and was the reason why HRC actively sought out left leaning help in the media … shame. Shame on you.
The list of names have not even changed much, other than the thousands of new names of operatives they have mentored. George Conway and Kellyanne worked in the shadows to make sure people knew what direction Clinton’s penis leaned. Only now, Kellyanne is rewriting “HERstory” and George actively worked both sides to invoke the 25th amendment so Pence (his fellow CNP member) could take control of the presidency… but failed because those he worked with before were mostly now tRUMP, not GOP, loyalists.
I am Canadian and can name 20 names by heart and easily find you 20 more still actively involved in that vast right wing conspiracy Clinton tried to warn you about. Can you? If you can’t, you may be part of the problem. PS: Many Q, Neo-Nazis/white supremacists/white nationalists, fascists, and other alt-right have and will again vie for local and state leadership positions as well as Federal seats. Will you know them when you see and hear them?
I am going to let Anakai’s comment on a brilliant argument bring it home that it is not only far right wing media that is to blame for normalizing lies, corruption, violence and immorality. (Although the NYT seems to skew more right than left)
The media has spent the last 40 years emulating the old MTV “reality teevee” formula wherein there must always be irreparable conflict and gladiator-like confrontation in order to appeal to the lowest common denominator of potential readers and viewers.
Culturally in America, facts and anecdotal evidence are anathemas to the body politick mindset: everything laid before the public MUST be in the form of entertainment: NOT education or enlightenment, and conflict is the easiest sale any form of media will make all day. Saturate the public with that kind of programming (both literally and figuratively) for 40 years straight and you end up with trashy news and trashy politicians elected by trashy voters. That pretty much the entire anointed “leadership” of the Republican Party has yet to see a single day in court after the murder of a half million of us through deception, delay and political deflection speaks volumes about our degree of morality.
[I will also add that the media does what I call turd polishing… to attract more eyes and normalize]
NYT...1924
I was up until 3 finishing this so that means… I won’t be here to read your critiques about my grammar and spelling. How sad! Hopefully a few of you will take a note of this list rather then just skim and leave. Ignoring what is happening is never a good idea. The right is counting on that…