You know, I've heard a lot of this on podcasts over the past several months and
they referred to the articles that the information came from, on the podcasts.
And as I keep teleling everyone, my short term memory is bad. But if you go to
the Consortium News website, you should be able to find many of them. Others
are on Truthdig and some are on The Grayzone Project. Actually, the information
about Israel colluding with the Trump campaign was in the corporate media but
because they didn't emphasize it or point it out, people didn't notice it. But
there were mainstream articles about Mueller's findings that there were all
these meetings between officials from Netenyahu's government and Kushner, as
well as other people before the election. And there is an Israely tech company
that has been involved. The websites that cover Israel/Palestine like
Mondoweiss and The Electronic Imfitada, have had stuff about this on and off,
also.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Mary Otten
Sent: Friday, October 26, 2018 4:36 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Russian interference re: Re: At a Berlin
security conference, hardline neocon Jamie Fly appeared to claim some credit
for the recent coordinated purge of alternative media, report Max Blumenthal
and Jeb Sprague.
Mariam,
I’m not surprised that Israel tried to help Trump. But I’ve obviously missed
whatever the articles are that you have been reading. Got any really good ones?
Mary
Sent from my iPhone
On Oct 26, 2018, at 1:09 PM, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Interestingly, there's a lot more unambiguous evidence that Trump was
greatly helped in the campaign, by the Israeli government. Mueller has found
this evidence, but the media tends to downplay it.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of peter altschul
Sent: Thursday, October 25, 2018 11:25 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Russian interference re: Re: At a Berlin security
conference, hardline neocon Jamie Fly appeared to claim some credit for the
recent coordinated purge of alternative media, report Max Blumenthal and Jeb
Sprague.
The main conflict is not whether Russia interfered with the 2016 election,
but the extent to which the Trump campaign supported these efforts. Peter
----- Original Message -----
From: "Miriam Vieni" <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
To: <blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date sent: Thu, 25 Oct 2018 21:32:22 -0400
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: At a Berlin security conference, hardline
neocon Jamie Fly appeared to claim some credit for the recent coordinated
purge of alternative media, report Max Blumenthal and Jeb Sprague.
A huge amount has been written about the Russian interference, a great deal
of which presents arguments to the effect that whatever interference may have
taken place, was minimal in comparison to the influence of the money that
the far right billionaires advertising and the Republican interference with
voting had. Also, several people pointed out that indictments are unproven
accusations. These are indictments of Russians who are in Russia and who
will never be tried in a court here because Russia will never allow them to
be extradited here. So basically, it's all good propaganda for the
Democratic Party, but it isn't particularly helpful. I don't know if you
read that book that he mentions, Shattered, but I did, on Bookshare when it
first came out. I think it's now also on BARD. Many journalists also read
it because it was written by two journalists and so I read about it which is
why I downloaded the book. There really is a description in the book of a
meeting after the election in which John Podesta suggests that Russian
interference in the election be presented to the public as the main reason
for Hillary Clinton's defeat. Well, the Russians probably interfered. After
all, the US has interfered in their elections as well as those of other
countries. I assume all the big powers do this. But Russian interference
was clearly not the reason for Hillary's defeat. There's a lot of material
counteracting Russiagate stories on Consortium News if you want to read some
material regarding it from the last 2 years. . What's most distressing about
all of this is that many forces in our country are now using alleged Russian
interference in our elections to attempt to curtail free speech.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Evan Reese
Sent: Thursday, October 25, 2018 8:40 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: At a Berlin security conference, hardline
neocon Jamie Fly appeared to claim some credit for the recent coordinated
purge of alternative media, report Max Blumenthal and Jeb Sprague.
Well, that makes things a whole lot clearer. <smile>. Actually not.
I wish they had addressed the indictments of 12 Russian agents by the Meuller
investigation back in July. Was that just a big mistake? Is Blumenthal
saying that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, or not? It seems he is
being a bit cagey here, or else I'm just not fololowing him as well as I
should be.
Evan
-----Original Message-----
From: Miriam Vieni
Sent: Thursday, October 25, 2018 6:18 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] At a Berlin security conference, hardline neocon
Jamie Fly appeared to claim some credit for the recent coordinated purge of
alternative media, report Max Blumenthal and Jeb Sprague.
Facebook Censorship of Alternative Media ?쁉ust the Beginning,??Warns Top
Neocon Insider
October 24, 2018
At a Berlin security conference, hardline neocon Jamie Fly appeared to claim
some credit for the recent coordinated purge of alternative media, report Max
Blumenthal and Jeb Sprague.
By Max Blumenthal and Jeb Sprague
Gray Zone Project
This October, Facebook and Twitter deleted the accounts of hundreds of users,
including many alternative media outlets maintained by American users. Among
those wiped out in the coordinated purge were popular sites that scrutinized
police brutality and U.S. interventionism, like The Free Thought Project,
Anti-Media, and Cop Block, along with the pages of journalists like Rachel
Blevins.
Facebook claimed that these pages had ?쐀roken our rules against spam and
coordinated inauthentic behavior.??However, sites like The Free Thought
Project were verified by Facebook and widely recognized as legitimate sources
of news and opinion. John Vibes, an independent reporter who contributed to
Free Thought, accused Facebook of ?쐄avoring mainstream sources and silencing
alternative voices.??
In comments published here for the first time, a neoconservative Washington
insider has apparently claimed a degree of credit for the recent purge ??and
promised more takedowns in the near future.
?쏳ussia, China, and other foreign states take advantage of our open political
system,??remarked Jamie Fly, a senior fellow and director of the Asia program
at the influential think tank the German Marshall Fund, which is funded by
the U.S. government and NATO. ?쏷hey can invent stories that get repeated
and spread through different sites. So we are just starting to push back.
Just this last week Facebook began starting to take down sites.
So this is just the beginning.??
Fly went on to complain that ?쏿ll you need is an email??to set up a Facebook
or Twitter account, lamenting the sites??
accessibility to members of the general public. He predicted a long struggle
on a global scale to fix the situation, and pointed out that to do so would
require constant vigilance.
Fly made these stunning comments to Jeb Sprague, who is a visiting faculty in
sociology at the University of California-Santa Barbara and co-author of this
article. The two spoke during a lunch break at a conference on Asian
security organized by the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik in Berlin,
Germany on Oct. 15 and 16.
The remarks by Fly ???쐗e are just starting to push back??
??seemed to confirm the worst fears of the alternative online media
community. If he was to be believed, the latest purge was motivated by
politics, not spam prevention, and was driven by powerful interests hostile
to dissident views, particularly where American state violence is concerned.
Fly: A Rising Neocon
Fly: Neocon rising.
Fly is an influential foreign policy hardliner who has spent the last year
lobbying for the censorship of ?쐄ringe views??on social media. Over the
years, he has advocated for a military assault on Iran, a regime change war
on Syria, and hiking military spending to unprecedented levels. He is the
embodiment of a neoconservative cadre.
Like so many second-generation neocons, Fly entered government by burrowing
into mid-level positions in George W. Bush?셲 National Security Council and
Department of Defense.
In 2009, he was appointed director of the Foreign Policy Initiative(FPI), a
rebranded version of Bill Kristol?셲 Project for a New American Century, or
PNAC. The latter outfit was an umbrella group of neoconservative activists
that first made the case for an invasion of Iraq as part of a wider project
of regime change in countries that resisted Washington?셲 sphere of influence.
By 2011, Fly was advancing the next phase in PNAC?셲 blueprint by clamoring
for military strikes on Iran. ?쏮ore diplomacy is not an adequate response,??
he argued. A year later, Fly urged the US to ?쐃xpand its list of targets
beyond the [Iranian] nuclear program to key command and control elements of
the Republican Guard and the intelligence ministry, and facilities associated
with other key government officials.??
Fly soon found his way into the senate office of Marco Rubio, a
neoconservative pet project, assuming a role as his top foreign policy
advisor. Amongst other interventionist initiatives, Rubio has taken the lead
in promoting harsh economic sanctions targeting Venezuela, even advocating
for a U.S. military assault on the country. When Rubio?셲 2016 presidential
campaign floundered amid a mass revolt of the Republican Party?셲 middle
American base against the party establishment, Fly was forced to cast about
for new opportunities.
He found them in the paranoid atmosphere of Russiagate that formed soon after
Donald Trump?셲 shock election victory.
PropOrNot Provides the Spark
A journalistic insider?셲 account of the Hillary Clinton presidential
campaign, Shattered, revealed that ?쐇n the days after the election, Hillary
declined to take responsibility for her own loss.??Her top advisers were
summoned the following day, according to the book, ?쐔o engineer the case that
the election wasn?셳 entirely on the up-and-up ??Already, Russian hacking was
the centerpiece of the argument.??
Post: Ran with unverified story. (Photo credit: Daniel X
O?셄eil)
Less than three weeks after Clinton?셲 defeat, The Washington Post?셲 Craig
Timberg published a dubiously sourced report headlined, ?쏳ussian propaganda
effort helped spread ?쁣ake news.?쇺€?The article hyped up a McCarthyite effort
by a shadowy, anonymously run organization called PropOrNot to blacklist some
200 American media outlets as Russian ?쐎nline propaganda.??
The alternative media outfits on the PropOrNot blacklist included some of
those recently purged by Facebook and Twitter, such as The Free Thought
Project and Anti-Media. Among the criteria PropOrNot identified as signs of
Russian propaganda were:
?쏶upport for policies like Brexit, and the breakup of the EU and
Eurozone??and ?쏰pposition to Ukrainian resistance to Russia and Syrian
resistance to Assad.??PropOrNot called for ?쐄ormal investigations by the U.S.
government??into the outlets it had blacklisted.
According to Timberg, who uncritically promoted the media suppression
initiative, Propornot was established by ?쏿 nonpartisan collection of
researchers with foreign policy, military and technology backgrounds.??
Timberg quoted a figure associated with the George Washington University
Center for Cyber and Homeland Security, Andrew Weisburd, and cited a report
he wrote with his colleague, Clint Watts, on Russian meddling.
Timberg?셲 piece on PropOrNot was promoted widely by former top Clinton
staffers and celebrated by ex-Obama White House aide Dan Pfeiffer as ?쐔he
biggest story in the world.??But after a wave of stinging criticism,
including in the pages of The New Yorker, the article was amended with an
editor?셲 note stating, ?쏷he [Washington] Post??does not itself vouch for the
validity of PropOrNot?셲 findings regarding any individual media outlet.??
PropOrNot had been seemingly exposed as a McCarthyite sham, but the concept
behind it ??exposing online American media outlets as vehicles for Kremlin
?쏿ctive measures????continued to flourish.
Taxpayers Pay for Russian Bot Tracker
By August, a new, and seemingly related initiative appeared out of the blue,
this time with backing from a bipartisan coalition of Democratic foreign
policy hands and neocon Never Trumpers in Washington. Called the Alliance
for Securing Democracy (ASD), the outfit aimed to expose how supposed Russian
Twitter bots were infecting American political discourse with divisive
narratives