Category Archives: General Interest

January 28, 2019 · 1:06 am

No Intelligent Life Left Here

This post is just some random thoughts on the SPIN info war mess.

Lots of people dismiss social media as trivial, but Twitter is where the American journalists and pundits hang-out and where most of the Dem SPIN attacks and Trump’s counter-attacks launch. It’s the current epicenter of the scorched earth SPIN information war.

I know I mentioned this repeatedly, on my blog, during the 2015-2016 GOP Insurgency primary phase, that I encountered gang-up attacks on Disqus comment sections, at several right-wing sites, when I posted comments explaining why I thought Trump was a faux Republican and unfit to be president. I kept saying these gang-up attacks were eerily reminiscent of what happened in 1998 on the Excite message boards, where groups of new commenters descended on the Clinton impeachment boards at Excite, to bully and try to harass the Republican and conservative posters into silence.

About the time this happened on Disqus, the hoopla started about Russian bot trolling activities on social media. I spent a good bit of time trying to, in my amateurish way, sift through follower and following lists of the groups that showed up attacking any person who posted an anti-Trump post. I know I mentioned a lot of details .

As the election moved on, the hoopla started in the media about the dangerous “alt-right” and then it was “Russian collusion”. This alt-right hysteria propelled by the Left and mainstream media seemed to me, again, eerily reminiscent of the 90s, with the Clinton/Dem/media hysteria about “right-wing militias” after Ruby Ridge in ’92, Waco in ’93 and then OKC in ’95.

On those Excite message boards, there were some posters, who expressed some opinions that sounded like the stuff spouted by some militia groups I’d seen in news reports on TV and read about in the news. I engaged in conversation a few times with a few of the less radical ones, expressing that everyone needs to follow the law. I tried to engage in friendly debate with far-left peeps too on those Excite message boards. There was never anything remotely like friendly political debate in online political forums, that I saw. Even on those Excite message boards, I suspect many of the commenters were professional political pundits, activists and people involved in the news media – similar to the current Twitter crowd of flamethrowers and spinners.

In December 2018, the NY Times ran a story exposing an internal report they obtained, about Dem operatives created fake Russian bots during the Moore campaign.

Well, the Dems SPIN ops in the 90s were imitating Russian tactics too. SPIN info war operates in a way that strikes me as antithetical to American free speech principles – repetitive messaging to control the news media messaging. The SPIN effort includes hyping (spinning) polling which is manufactured information cascades, which result from the flooding of repetitive political messaging attacks. The spinning of polling is intended to marginalize dissenting views and casting them as being “out of the mainstream”. And of course there are the aggressive orchestrated high-tech media lynch mobs, engaged in vicious character assassinations.

About this Dem op in the Moore campaign:

“The secret project, which had a budget of just $100,000 and was carried out on Facebook and Twitter, was revealed after the New York Times obtained an internal report detailing the efforts.

“We orchestrated an elaborate ‘false flag’ operation that planted the idea that the Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet,” the internal report said. It also took credit for “radicalizing Democrats with a Russian bot scandal” after experimenting “with many of the tactics now understood to have influenced the 2016 elections.””

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/democratic-operatives-created-fake-russian-bots-in-alabama-race-designed-to-link-kremlin-to-republican-roy-moore

Here’s the most amazing part of this report, it states Dem political operatives were launching bots that looked like Russian bots, so they could spin it (amplify to use McKew’s fav phrase) that Russians were helping the Moore campaign:

“One participant in the project reportedly was Jonathon Morgan, the chief executive of New Knowledge, a firm that wrote a report – released by the Senate Intelligence Committee earlier this week – about Russia’s social media operations in the 2016 election and its efforts to hurt Hillary Clinton and help Donald Trump.”

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/democratic-operatives-created-fake-russian-bots-in-alabama-race-designed-to-link-kremlin-to-republican-roy-moore

And this:

“The Alabama project was funded by liberal billionaire and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman who gave $100,000 to the cause, according to the Times. Hoffman is one of Silicon Valley’s top donors to the Democrats, donating $7 million to various groups and campaigns in the last election cycle.

The money trickled down through American Engagement Technologies, a firm run by Mikey Dickerson who was appointed by former President Barack Obama to lead the newly-created United States Digital Service.”

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/democratic-operatives-created-fake-russian-bots-in-alabama-race-designed-to-link-kremlin-to-republican-roy-moore

Sorry for relying on this FOX report, but I do not have a NY Times subscription and have read my free articles for the month.

Here’s more:

“Billionaire Reid Hoffman apologized Wednesday for funding a group linked to a “highly disturbing” effort that spread disinformation during last year’s Alabama special election for U.S. Senate, but he said he was not aware that his money was being used for this purpose.”

“Hoffman’s statement is his first acknowledgement of his ties to a campaign that adopted tactics similar to those deployed by Russian operatives during the 2016 presidential election. In Alabama, the Hoffman-funded group allegedly used Facebook and Twitter to undermine support for Republican Roy Moore and boost Democrat Doug Jones, who narrowly won the race. Hoffman, an early Facebook investor and the co-founder of LinkedIn, expressed support for a federal investigation into what happened, echoing Jones’ position from last week.”

and

“But the statement left key facts unaddressed, including a full accounting of everyone who crafted and executed the campaign. The effort was the subject of a presentation in September to a group of progressive technology experts who met in downtown Washington to discuss electoral tactics, according to documents from that meeting obtained by The Washington Post and one of the attendees.”

https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/12/26/billionaire-apologizes-for-funding-disinformation-in-alamaba/

Bold-face highlights are mine

Seems like some of the “experts” the Dems and mainstream news media put forth to report on SPIN information warfare (computational propaganda is the term the experts use) have a lot of disturbing connections to Dem operatives engaged in, umm, aggressive, Dem computational propaganda efforts …

Computational propaganda is the same SPIN info war the Dems have been waging in the media since the 1990s. PERIOD. The Republicans, until 2016, were light years behind the Dem political SPIN operations. Silicon Valley is liberal Dem territory in America, so the tech “experts” in that industry, whom our government and media rely on for expertise on the problem, are um, liberal Dems with a lot of connections to big Dem political operatives.

There needs to be a thorough investigation into the entire “computational propaganda” business run by both Dems and Republicans, but I am pretty sure investigating the Dems vast, high-tech smear operations and decades old lock on SPIN information war in America, would require a massive crawl through the corrupt big money peeps in the Democratic upper-echelon and high-level Dem political figures – a vast RICO type investigation, for sure.

We have Dem foxes guarding our digital chicken coop and then when anyone catches them devouring a chicken, the Dem foxes are entrusted to “investigate” and provide the “experts” to explain it in the news media… “nothing to see here”…”dangerous, right-wing extremists”… “Russian bots everywhere”…”ack.. Trump the Authoritarian”…

Beam me up Scottie, there’s no intelligent life left here…

Added Thought, January 28, 2019:

The crawl through the “computational propaganda” business, especially with Dems, would have to encompass delving into illegal leaking of classified information to the media, especially by former Obama administration officials… paging John Brennan, Comey, and Clapper, anyone…

Adam Schiff, where are you???

Added Thought, January 28, 2019: Googled this New Knowledge company quoted above: : Jonathon Morgan, the chief executive of New Knowledge, a firm that wrote a report – released by the Senate Intelligence Committee earlier this week – about Russia’s social media operations in the 2016 election and its efforts to hurt Hillary Clinton and help Donald Trump.

New Knowledge claims to be an “information integrity company”… I quote from their site:

“Founded In 2015
Headquartered in Austin, TX. We were the first organization outside the U.S. intelligence community to identify Russia’s campaign to influence the 2016 presidential election. Our leadership has testified before Congress, advised the State Department and the NSA, and worked in counter-terrorism. As the information war escalates, we believe more than ever that our responsibility is to provide an advanced, reliable disinformation solution to national security agencies, responsible leaders, and trusted brands.”

https://www.newknowledge.com/about-us/

What the heck, the chief executive of the company the Senate Intelligence Committee entrusted to write a report on Russian social media operations in 2016, is involved in a domestic disinformation social media operation, launching fake Russian bots promoting Moore and then a media campaign claiming Russian bots are trying to help Moore’s campaign… That’s the truth, folks.

Added Thought, January 29, 2019:

Since 1999, I have been trying to unravel the Dem political operative SPIN networks (computational propaganda). I’ve gotten pretty good at identifying their spin messaging and when new spin messaging or one of their new smear campaigns is launching, but I have never had any means to unravel the networks back to the top – who are the political operatives behind it – the politicians, big money Dems and operatives running the show.

What happened to me in 1998, had to come from the highest levels of the Clinton administration, because there is no way on earth that retired general, who hates me, would have been involved in an attack like that, unless he believed he was receiving legitimate intelligence that I had done something wrong. I don’t have so much as a speeding ticket and I was (and still am) a law-abiding homemaker, Army wife. I never belonged to any political organizations, have never owned a firearm and my group affiliations have been things like being a Red Cross volunteer and belonging to my local quilt guild. There’s likely never going to be a way to prove what happened to me in 1998.

Trust me, I can empathize with Brett Kavanaugh finding himself in the middle of an orchestrated smear campaign and helpless to defend against the Dem’s media spinners, who aid and abet the Dem’s computational propaganda efforts constantly. The media won’t even admit they display “bias”, so unless these networks are exposed, they assuredly would deny corrupt media collusion participating in vicious smear campaigns.

There was reporting during the Moore smear campaign, meant to bolster the smear campaign’s credibility, that the Washington Post sent over 30 reporters to Alabama to search for “victims” and to trash Moore as a chasing after young teen girls perv. Those reporters were digging for anyone who would trash Moore, to add to their SPIN smear ammo. Gloria Allred, longtime Dem. insider and feminist activist lawyer, descended on Alabama too… to represent “victims” (this was the same scenario used after the Access Hollywood leak orchestrated Dem/media smear campaign). #Resist is an orchestrated smear campaign to take down Trump, by any means necessary – that’s the truth.

The Moore/Dem fakeRussian bots case and especially this Covington/Phillips case are recent and unraveling the Dem’s computational propaganda (SPIN) networks involved in these two cases could be a way to start dismantling the wholesale public corruption within the Dem’s SPIN info war network – their vast computational propaganda operation, that has been operating since the 1990s.

32 Comments

Filed under Corrupt Media Collusion, General Interest, Information War, Politics, The Media

January 26, 2019 · 11:08 am

Twitter cover-up?

Busy tweeting this morning, with so much to comment about. NBC reported on the email account linked to propelling the Covington boys and the Native American man incident to go viral. Buried down at paragraph 11, there’s this bit of information:

“On Wednesday afternoon, @2020fight deleted her Twitter account, seemingly after Twitter lifted her suspension. (Suspended accounts cannot be deleted.)”

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/twitter-account-amplified-covington-catholic-d-c-march-video-appears-n961981

Why on earth would Twitter lift the suspension on this account at the center of the controversy? If the account was actually an account in the San Francisco bay area, was it connected with some partisan political operation? Shouldn’t the intent be to preserve an account with so many questions about it and even Democratic Senator Warner asking Twitter for more information about that account yesterday?. Check out paragraph 2, which exonerates the account holder of any malign intentions:

“But it appears that the account, @2020fight, was run not by a foreign operative trying to fan America’s political divisions but rather by a woman who described herself as a San Francisco Bay Area teacher and advocated liberal causes — and, to all appearances, did not expect to find herself at the center of a media firestorm.”

If the video wasn’t the result of foreign info operators, was it the result of domestic partisan info operators? Starting to smell like the Dems corrupt Moore Alabama type operations might be a widespread Dem social media operation.

So, many questions…

Added Comment: January 25, 2019, 11:44 am, The vague weasel words the media uses always cause my spin antennae to twitch. In the 2nd paragraph, it begins, “but it appears” and ends with “and, to all appearances”. No one states whether those conducting the investigation into the account had any conversation or communication with the account holder(s).

The account triggered suspicions, because of the profile stating it was a CA school teacher, but the profile picture was a Brazilian blogger. The CNN article quoted Rob McDonagh, an assistant editor at Storyful:

“McDonagh said he found the account suspicious due to its “high follower count, highly polarized and yet inconsistent political messaging, the unusually high rate of tweets, and the use of someone else’s image in the profile photo.””

https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/21/tech/twitter-suspends-account-native-american-maga-teens/index.html

What exactly does “highly polarized and yet inconsistent political messaging,” mean? Was it political messaging playing to (targeting) different political factions? So, we don’t know what the messaging in the deleted account, with a very high rate of tweets, which was crucial to propelling the Covington student/Nathan Phillips video to go viral, actually contained. We need more information about what McDonagh meant by “inconsistent political messaging”.

27 Comments

Filed under General Interest, Information War, Politics, Twitter Tales, Uncategorized

January 22, 2019 · 1:11 am

Another worrying sign

“We may never know exactly how SPIN info war evolved or who all was involved in developing the techniques. We may never know if hostile foreign intelligence was involved at its inception, but we assuredly know, with the escalated Russian cyber attacks and online troll activities, that they are definitely involved now.”

Thought from my previous blog post, About Information Voids

The weekend viral story of a confrontation of Native American activist and some Catholic high school boys wearing MAGA hats seemed to charge ahead of the Buzzfeed story claiming President Trump told Michael Cohen to lie in testimony to Congress.

Tonight CNN has a report, Twitter suspends account that helped ignite controversy over viral encounter.

According to CNN, the good news is that Rob McDonagh, an assistant editor at Storyful, an online content vetting service, was monitoring Twitter activity and noticed a suspicious account and Twitter investigated and suspended the account:

“The account claimed to belong to a California schoolteacher. Its profile photo was not of a schoolteacher, but of a blogger based in Brazil, CNN Business found. Twitter suspended the account soon after CNN Business asked about it.

The account, with the username @2020fight, was set up in December 2016 and appeared to be the tweets of a woman named Talia living in California. “Teacher & Advocate. Fighting for 2020,” its Twitter bio read. Since the beginning of this year, the account had tweeted on average 130 times a day and had more than 40,000 followers.

Late on Friday, the account posted a minute-long video showing the now-iconic confrontation between a Native American elder and the high school students, with the caption, “This MAGA loser gleefully bothering a Native American protester at the Indigenous Peoples March.”

That version of the video was viewed at least 2.5 million times and was retweeted at least 14,400 times, according to a cached version of the tweet seen by CNN Business.”

https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/21/tech/twitter-suspends-account-native-american-maga-teens/index.html

The CNN report also quotes Molly McKew, an information warfare researcher (anti-Trumper), even though she admitted she saw the tweet and retweeted it on Saturday, claiming, “she later realized that a network of anonymous accounts were working to amplify the video.”

I wonder if we have people in our national security apparatus paying close attention to this stuff or if America is at the mercy of random civilian cyber peeps to catch this stuff?

Added thought: I’ve wondered for a long time if some of these short-lived viral stories making Americans look too dumb to exist, that burst onto social media, create mass overreaction, and garner news notice, then disappear quickly are the work of hostile foreign information operations. Seeing how this account plucked the video from an Instagram posting and then amplified on Twitter made me think about this again. An example of what I mean, are stories like that viral Teens Eating Tide Pods story. Just one more thing I will continue to ponder about.

Update: January 22, 2019, 5:54 PM

The CNN report cited above was updated this afternoon.

“The source familiar with Twitter’s investigation told CNN Business the company’s initial findings suggested the account was run from the US, but said it can be difficult to determine an account owner’s actual location.

Twitter users can try to mask their true location using services like virtual private networks, which can allow users to appear as if they are in a different country.

CNN Business has not independently determined where this account was being run from.”

https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/21/tech/twitter-suspends-account-native-american-maga-teens/index.html

CNN Business also tried to reach out to the account holder(s) to inquire about the account, but was blocked by the account holder(s). So, basically, they don’t know who the account really belongs to yet.

6 Comments

Filed under General Interest, Information War, Politics, Twitter Tales

January 19, 2019 · 9:35 pm

About rumor control

Part 1. Some Thoughts On Rumor Control

I’m going to break this post into two parts, offering some thoughts on rumor control and a couple of links, one which deals with rumor control from a governmental effort standpoint and the other which explains rumor control from a Christian viewpoint, but can easily be useful to anyone trying to deal with gossip, rumors and spin overload in their lives.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about how there seems to be an almost complete absence or concern about the importance of rumor control by our elected leaders and among the hordes of SPIN wizards fueling our scorched earth SPIN information war, flaming across American media. I suspect most of our political leaders have no clue about how damaging whispering campaigns, smear campaigns and ramping up divisiveness can be to our national character and the morale of the American people.

Without wading into too many details, during Desert Storm, my husband, a career soldier, was assigned to a unit in Germany, that deployed from Germany to the Gulf. The Army had thousands of families living in Germany. One of the things I learned, first-hand, from that experience of being in a foreign country with many frightened wives and children is that rumors and panic spread like wildfire.

Rumors around the Army are a constant problem and the Army makes rumor control a command responsibility, because some rumors can cause confusion, dissension, and negatively impact morale. Rumors can have a devastating effect on the soldiers’ trust in their leadership. Ditto that for negative rumors about our elected leaders. Rumors in wartime can be extremely dangerous and damaging to national unity.

As rumors spread, panic quickly blew way out of proportion among many wives during Desert Storm. Due to the concerns about possible terrorist attacks against American family members in Germany, extraordinary security measures were put in place by the U.S. military, working with German officials. Once our husbands deployed to the Gulf, some of those extra security measures raised fears among many young wives. Our husbands going off to war also elevated fears, but along with that, the endless stream of rumors was an everyday source of fueling the wives gossip chain and fear. The endless stream of rumors is part of life around the Army, likewise the even crazier stream of rumors among wives, unfamiliar with the Army, became off-the-chain at times during Desert Storm.

Three of our kids were in elementary school and our youngest was still at home. I can’t remember exactly if it was one bomb threat or two that occurred at their school, but I remember there was also a bomb threat at a nearby military installation at the PX too.

Talking to the wife of my husband’s battalion commander, who was a teacher at that school, she related the chaos of trying to keep control of the children, as mothers from the nearby military housing area rushed to the school to grab their children. We lived in leased government housing in a German village several miles away, so my kids came home on the school bus after the bomb threat. I asked my kids what happened, because I’d already heard about it via other wives calling me. My kids were pretty nonchalant about the bomb threat. What happened to incite panic even more with Army wives was that many of them relied on neighbors or friends, who were operating off the latest feverish rumors. Often around the Army, there were young wives, unfamiliar with the Army and very distrustful of the Army, in general. They were most vulnerable to the devastating effect of rumors run amok. Crazy stories exploded with those bomb threats, but I heard plenty of other crazy stories (rumors) from wives.

The Army also left some soldiers in Germany to manage the rear detachment operations.

The Army had set up a family support system relying mostly on leaders’ wives to organize it and run it. Often wives called me for information, because my husband was the first sergeant, the senior NCO, in the company and his company commander was single, so I was the volunteer family support leader for the company. An odd rumor I remember was a wife, who was German, called me and she was convinced the Army was not giving her husband water in the Gulf and she wanted to know how she could send him water. I tried to reassure her that the Army needed her husband to be able to fight and would do everything possible to make sure he had water and food. Many times, I noticed that I heard about a hysterical wife, worked up about a rumor, from other wives calling me and telling me about her, before the hysterical wife even called me. Often those other wives were calling me to make sure the rumor wasn’t true. It was a frequent occurrence to get calls that were about rumors run amok.

This past week’s insane media hysteria with our escalating scorched earth SPIN information war and the Buzzfeed story, followed by the Mueller team pushback, made me think of that Desert Storm experience with rumors.

I also remembered a study, The Psychology of Rumor, I had heard mentioned various times in reading. I had never read the actual study, which was conducted by two Harvard psychology professors, Gordon W. Allport and Leo Postman, after WWII. A quick google search and I located the study available free online. I’ve been reading through this study about rumors, in general, and then more specifically rumors in wartime. They divided rumors into several different categories, for instance fear rumors were common, as were wish rumors about events people were yearning for, like the end of the war. They also identified the most damaging type of rumors as wedge drivers, which were rumors maligning certain groups in society or inciting hate.

I also have been thinking about a book, Stopping Words That Hurt:Positive Words In A World Gone Negative, by Dr. Michael D. Sedler, which I read a few years ago. This book is written from a Christian perspective, but honestly is very sound advice on how to work to stop “evil reporting” in your life:

“Evil report: When an individual maliciously injures, damages or discredits another’s reputation or character through the use of words or attitude.

If the intent is to hurt another person’s reputation, we must examine our motives.”

Sedler, Dr. Michael D.. Stopping Words That Hurt: Positive Words in a World Gone Negative (p. 16). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition

Dr. Sedler offers many fascinating Biblical examples of “evil reporting,” but also many everyday examples, that we all encounter. One of the things to consider in Sedler’s advice is he counsels that people work to not only stop being bearers of “evil reporting”, but to work to stop even listening to “evil reporting”. Pretty simple advice, but much harder to practice in our tabloid culture.

This book has been edited and republished under a different title, What To Do When Words Get Ugly.

Our SPIN information war thrives on spreading wedge driver rumors and “evil reporting”.

1 Comment

Filed under General Interest, Information War, Military, Politics

January 11, 2019 · 10:12 pm

Missed signals beyond the SPIN noise

America is in a totally different place with our partisan divides than even 20 years ago with the Clinton impeachment drama, which fueled an aggressive Clinton-orchestrated scorched earth SPIN effort to keep Bill Clinton from being removed from office. Thinking back to the 1998 scorched earth SPIN war, many questions, in my mind, still remain.

One of the biggest questions I have goes back a bit further than the Clinton years. In 1991 the Soviet Union collapsed. The Soviet Union ran massive, aggressive active measures in America, including disinformation operations for decades. What happened to all of the Soviet Union’s active measure operations and operatives (many of them Americans) involved in operations against America after the Soviet Union collapsed? Where did they go?

Even more importantly, during the 1990s, what happened to America’s aggressive efforts to monitor and counter Soviet active measures? Did we put down our guard and assume the Soviet threat was defeated and stop paying close attention to Russian operatives? Where did the Americans working on the Soviet dime or followers of communist ideology, who fueled Soviet disinformation operations in America go to find new homes in American political operations after the collapse of the Soviet Union? They didn’t all just quit. Did they just shift to working in American partisan political “media operations” and “opposition research” organizations or were many of them already embedded in American partisan activities? American academia and media were heavily infiltrated by Soviet disinformation operations for decades, before the collapse of the Soviet Union. What happened to these Soviet operations after the Soviet Union collapsed?

In late December 2018, news broke of a Democrat disinformation operation called Project Birmingham, which was run against Republican senate candidate, Roy Moore, in his 2017 campaign. This Dem disinformation operation imitated Russian disinformation operations and was funded by a big Dem donor, Reid Hoffman, who claims no knowledge that the money was going to Project Birmingham. Many Dems, including Doug Jones, condemned the Project Birmingham operation, and are publicly distancing themselves from it. On December 27, 2018, the Washington Post reported:

“The looming threat of new state and federal investigations adds to the scrutiny facing those involved in the campaign to undermine support for Moore and bolster Jones. Project Birmingham appeared to broadly mirror some of the same tactics adopted by Russian operatives who spread social and political unrest on Facebook and Twitter during the 2016 presidential election. In Alabama, its backers even introduced fake evidence that automated Russian accounts, called bots, were supporting Moore in the race.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/12/27/disinformation-campaign-targeting-roy-moores-senate-bid-may-have-violated-law-alabama-attorney-general-says/?utm_term=.a886aecf8b13

A few days ago the NY Times had a report, Democrats Faked Online Push to Outlaw Alcohol in Alabama Race, about another Dem false flag operation during the Roy Moore run, which was dubbed “Dry Alabama”. The NY Times reports:

“The “Dry Alabama” Facebook page, illustrated with stark images of car wrecks and videos of families ruined by drink, had a blunt message: Alcohol is the devil’s work, and the state should ban it entirely.

Along with a companion Twitter feed, the Facebook page appeared to be the work of Baptist teetotalers who supported the Republican, Roy S. Moore, in the 2017 Alabama Senate race. “Pray for Roy Moore,” one tweet exhorted.

In fact, the Dry Alabama campaign, not previously reported, was the stealth creation of progressive Democrats who were out to defeat Mr. Moore — the second such secret effort to be unmasked. In a political bank shot made in the last two weeks of the campaign, they thought associating Mr. Moore with calls for a statewide alcohol ban would hurt him with moderate, business-oriented Republicans and assist the Democrat, Doug Jones, who won the special election by a hair-thin margin.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/07/us/politics/alabama-senate-facebook-roy-moore.html

Further in this NY Times piece are details of the people involved in organizing this Dry Alabama false flag operation and this bio stuck out at me, “Evan Coren, a progressive activist who works for the National Archives unit that handles classified documents.” A person working for the National Archives, handling classified documents, moon lighted as a progressive activist, orchestrating online false flag operations in a Senate race in Alabama. Anything amiss or unethical with his moonlighting activities here? Any concerns about him having access to classified documents?

This SPIN agitprop has now devolved to Leftist operatives waging false flag operations to make a Republican senatorial candidate’s social media followers look like Russian bots… We have assuredly jumped the shark in this scorched earth SPIN info war.

The reason I keep pondering about the beginnings of the America’s mass media SPIN information war is because how spin works has always smelled like classic Soviet disinformation operations to me. It’s a mass media brainwashing operation to control “public opinion” (sold as the “will of the American people”) as determined by polls. The media and politicians in America sell the polling and assiduously work to herd Americans to conforming their beliefs to align with this manufactured “public opinion”. The SPIN operations rely heavily on vicious smear campaigns.

Until Trump, the Left and mainstream media (also predominantly leftists) controlled SPIN operations in America. FOX News ran a counter SPIN operation, feeding far-right movements and fear mongering about Dems and the Left, but they never managed to meld together a SPIN operation colluding directly with top Republicans, until Trump.

American political news remains abuzz about “Russian collusion”, but the Steele dossier, a melding of Democratic operatives, a former star reporter turned “commercial research and strategic intelligence” entrepreneur, former British intelligence officer/expert on Russia and unknown Russian sources produced information purported to come from sources close to the Kremlin. That information was fed to the FBI and top American intel officials as an intelligence product from a former British intelligence professional and it speaks to a melding of partisan SPIN ops deliberately used to corrupt the judgment of FBI and top American intel officials.

The circuitous routes used to feed the Steele dossier to FBI and DOJ officials speaks to a determination to create an aura of legitimacy about the information in the dossier and to deceive and manipulate them into buying into the dossier. John McCain despised Trump. McCain was targeted by a former British ambassador and sold on the dossier. McCain’s friend, flew to England and personally met with Steele to get a copy of the dossier. John McCain hand-carried that dossier directly to James Comey.

I can’t prove what happened to me, but during the Clinton impeachment in 1998 I wrote comments on the Excite message boards attacking the Clinton spin, which was worded to corrupt foundational American principles. I also explained how SPIN works and how it seems like something more at home in Russian disinformation efforts. My story, Messsages of mhere, at the top of my blog, although written in a rather snarky tone, is what I believe to be the truth about what happened to me in 1998. I believe false information was deliberately fed to a retired general, who hates me. I believe he was recruited to silence me. I can’t prove any of that though. Realizing the underhanded ways the Steele dossier was fed to top FBI and DOJ officials reminded me of 1998.

Why did James Comey and his top people treat the Steele dossier as legitimate intel, even though they couldn’t verify it? Why doesn’t Comey care about who funded the dossier? Why didn’t Peter Strzok, the FBI’s top Russian analyst, make tracking the dossier funding and information back to its original sources a priority? This Trump SPIN hysteria not only manipulates ordinary Americans and corrodes their judgment, the Trump SPIN hysteria appears to have corroded and corrupted the judgment of top officials in the FBI and intelligence agencies. The Trump SPIN hysteria has also clouded, in some cases, even corrupted the judgment of our elected leaders.

In the Roy Moore situation, I dislike Moore’s politics and find his bigotry repugnant, however as that smear campaign against Moore raged on in the media, with more and more 30+ year-old allegations of Moore preying on underage teenage girls ramping up SPIN hysteria, I noted how many conservative Republicans began to speak out against Moore and they completely bought into the Dem-orchestrated media smear campaign. Initially, I was willing to believe the first allegation in the Roy Moore smear campaign, until Gloria Allred showed up and it bothered me that there were no allegations of Moore’s alleged preying on underage teen girls beyond those 30 + year-old allegations, which struck me as odd. I wrote a blog post:

I believed the first woman who made allegations against Roy Moore, but once Gloria Allred showed up, the media non-stop redo of the Access Hollywood started, coupled with the Trump is delusional spin and this new “moral purity” purge on the Left began, well, let’s just say I am not sure how to even begin to decide on what is a “credible allegation” after finding out that the WaPo descended on AL, along with #Resist dirt-diggers to turn up these allegations. At first the media hyped there were 30 some witnesses to corroborate that Moore chased teenage girls, but I no longer have real trust in any of this reporting. I keep wondering if he was a total perv, who chased teenagers, where are more recent victims? Does he have a long list of affairs or anything like that? I am open to listening to new allegations, but at this point, I see more evidence this was an orchestrated smear campaign and less that he was a child molester. I still want to believe the first lady. The one Allred rolled out and all that crying looked just like the Access Hollywood victim she coached.

https://libertybellediaries.com/2017/12/07/metoo-lunacy-begins/

The orchestrated Brett Kavanaugh smear campaign rolled out the same way. And going back to the 2016 campaign, the Dump on Trump smear campaign rolled out the same way too, with the Access Hollywood tape and the Gloria Allred victim line-up. Trump, a womanizer, does have real dirt mixed in with the pure Dem spin fabrications, like the Alicia Machado, “fat-shaming” allegation, that Hillary Clinton launched at the end of a presidential debate. She was totally in on that orchestrated SPIN hit.

These smear campaigns aren’t the result of some peon political operatives run amok; they are run by powerful people in the Dem machine. The level to which the Dems will go to demonize Trump’s record with women, knows no bounds and while I find the man’s behavior totally unacceptable, so much of the SPIN about Trump and women is deliberately manufactured to incite women against him.

In Dec. 2017, with the Trump/Russian collusion spin and the Trump the Authoritarian spin ramping up, a short-lived spin attack on Trump launched about him “trying to kiss former FOX News employee, Juliet Huddy in an elevator around 2005-2006, painting this as Trump sexually assaulting Huddy. Huddy quickly backtracked and said she hadn’t felt threatened, but liberal media and even top Dems, like Donna Brazile, retweeted and hyped this story. The reality check is Huddy was on a date with a rich businessman/celebrity and he leaned over to kiss her after the date, but the media was running wild painting this as Trump tried to sexually assault Huddy.

The Dems at the top are well aware of these smear campaigns and they are the ones, who do nothing to put the brakes on them. Yet, when some embarrassing details of their corrupt SPIN ops leak out, everyone involved claims they knew nothing. That Steele dossier had the fingerprints of top Clinton sleaze operatives involved, so I believe the Clintons were the ones in charge.

The entire Clinton SPIN operations from its beginning, in the 90s, which evolved to be embraced by the entire Democratic Party, needs some serious investigation for both corruption and for hostile foreign infiltration. Ditto that for Trump’s SPIN operations, oh nevermind, Mueller has spent two years investigating that, while the Dems, media, Comey, Clapper and Brennan keep throwing up a massive smokescreen about the Steele dossier. They pretend that some conservative news organization was behind the GPS Fusion effort and the mainstream media assiduously avoids investigating the Steele dossier. Instead they give Clapper, Brennan and Dem mouthpieces endless airtime to ramp up Trump/Russian collusion and to insinuate the dossier is a legit intelligence report.

There are strong warning signs that there’s plenty of hostile foreign infiltration of the American news media, especially our political news media. SPIN disinformation speaks to a melding of Cold War era Soviet-type disinformation operations into the very fabric of American political operations and news reporting. Figuring out how much is homegrown corruption and how much is hostile foreign info operations remains a pressing national security concern, that no one seems to notice.

In the 90s the domestic partisan SPIN war in America erupted with constant Clinton scandals (some real and some right-wing operative hyped). The Clintons ran their own SPIN “war room” and vast networks of political operatives, on both sides, emerged as America’s top spin warriors. Interestingly, many of those original operatives, on both sides, are key players in this endless 2016 scorched earth SPIN info war, but one can only wonder what the extent of hostile foreign infiltration of our partisan SPIN fronts in America really is?

Looking back to the collapse of the Soviet Union, followed by the eruption of our domestic SPIN war in the 90s, my worry is, that perhaps we missed a whole bunch of signals, because of the constant SPIN noise.

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Filed under Corrupt Media Collusion, General Interest, Information War, Messages of mhere, Politics

January 9, 2019 · 11:47 pm

“Crisis”

Donald J. Trump‏Verified account @realDonaldTrump

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Billions of dollars are sent to the State of California for Forest fires that, with proper Forest Management, would never happen. Unless they get their act together, which is unlikely, I have ordered FEMA to send no more money. It is a disgraceful situation in lives & money!

10:25 AM – 9 Jan 2019

I’ve tweeted some about Trump’s chaos lately, but every time I sit down to write a blog post, there’s an internal debate whether to let Trump dominate my blog or write about some other topics. Truth be told though, worries about Trump’s erratic behavior, his administration in constant personnel turmoil and the Left’s relentless Trump hysteria can’t be avoided. This endless scorched earth SPIN war is the defining political/media event in America.

America’s problem isn’t just Trump’s chaos. The endless scorched earth SPIN information war between Trump/Fox vs. Dems/mainstream media looms as a very grave national security crisis, that no one seems to see.

Often, I feel like I am a lone voice in the wilderness tweeting and blogging warnings about spin. Since 1998, I’ve been trying to examine ways this SPIN war could evolve in America and what the final stages of this self-destructive SPIN war would look like. I never in a million years would have dreamed up a Trump’s “GOP Insurgency”, the complete dismantling of the GOP, or the alliance of Trump and FOX News to create a spin front to combat the Dems/mainstream media lock on controlling the news media in America.

The culmination of the vast corruption by both the Clintons and Trump in 2016, the corruption within the highest levels of the Obama administration, the corruption of the media portends things won’t end well for America without a dramatic sea change in our politics and in the media. That said, here’s the latest on our national embarrassment – Trump, the Dems and media’s SPIN war.

America endured another Trump, Chuck and Nancy Show last night, in this ongoing government shutdown showdown/The Wall stand-off. All three of them looked and sounded stiff and ridiculous. These speeches were just one more spin battle to fight for owning another spin cycle and the media obliged with high-pitched lamentations about whether the networks should grant Trump prime time to make his wall showdown speech, followed by demands for Democrats to be granted equal time to offer a response to Trump’s speech. Of course, then the feverish media doom-casting about “What if Trump declares a state of emergency?” erupted. Trump, of course gloried in the media spotlight and many of his loyal FOX pundits, as usual, helped sell the Trump “CRISIS!” hysteria, to manipulate Trump’s base.

At the same time, many Congressional Democrats and Republicans were urging Trump not to declare a state of emergency, as were some Trump advisers.

Trump opted not to pull that state of emergency trigger (yet). Schumer and Pelosi offered the same “no money for the wall” red line. Each side, as usual, declared victory in this staged spin battle and American endured another political spectacle that only fueled more media hysterics, more extreme partisanship and eroded our American political culture a bit more.

By this morning, Trump, lashed out on Twitter with the above tweet.

Reporters immediately contacted FEMA for comment and FEMA had no comment. And therein lies the seeds of Trump’s self-destruction, if anyone cares to cut through the spin and partisan hysteria. Once again, Trump, likely from watching something on TV this morning, impulsively decided to lash out at Democrats in CA. He tweeted this without any consultation with this advisers or talking to FEMA. He’s going to pressure CA pols to reform their forest management programs by cutting funds, to aid helpless victims of forest fires.

This impulsive lashing out, one-man-show tweeting, leaving his own top advisers in the dark, assures Trump will never settle into the presidency or build any sort of unified team. It’s always going to be endless chaos, emanating from the top.

Many Trump mouthpieces and supporters in the punditry class, ignore or downplay Trump’s tweeting as just, “Trump letting off steam” or pretend the tweets aren’t really presidential announcements. Other Trump supporters, play dumb, dismissing his tweets, by airily waving them aside, claiming they don’t follow his tweets or pay attention to social media.

This morning’s impulsive presidential order will fade from memory quickly and in the scheme of Trump impulsively executing his presidential duties via tweets, this one ranks as small fries compared to his Syria announcement after a phone call with Erdogan.

With that tweet Trump announced a military withdrawal without informing or consulting anyone on his national security team or America’s allies. They all found out via his tweet.

The Syria tweet proved the last straw for Sec. of Defense, General Mattis, but that wasn’t the first military decision via tweet, that Trump announced without informing the Pentagon.

Trump’s toxic leadership assures constant chaos in the highest office in America, but even more ominously it assures confusion and distrust at the highest levels of the Pentagon.

In this stand-off with Schumer and Pelosi over funding for his wall, it would not surprise me in the least if some TV news coverage of the stand-off incites him and he furiously lashes out via tweet, declaring a state of emergency… because he can and because he knows it will propel him to be the star of the SPIN universe, outshining every other news story in the world.

Even if America inches along, without a real constitutional crisis due to Trump’s melding the Office of the Presidency into a third-rate reality TV show with constant social media interactions with his fans and the media, the prestige and the dignity of the presidency have been forever cheapened.

The larger scorched earth spin war, could spiral into a real national crisis in many different ways, including hostile info war operations inciting mass panic, faking news stories of civil disruptions, and looming dangers from “fake news” coming not from Trump or the mainstream media, but from America’s enemies. A few days ago Trump floated a “military version of eminent domain”, asserting he could send the military to seize private property along the border for his wall. That Trump threat made me think of the Obama era conspiracy hysteria in the Southwest over Jade Helm, a 2015 US military training exercise. In 2018 former NSA director Michael Hayden stated:

“AUSTIN — Former CIA director Michael Hayden said Thursday during a television interview that the 2015 Jade Helm controversy in Texas was an early example of Russian efforts to spread misinformation in the United States.

Speaking on MSNBC’s Morning Joe as part of a book tour, Hayden, a retired Air Force four-star general who also ran the National Security Agency, said Russians fueled the distrust over the military training exercise in an attempt to influence the American public.

“There was an exercise in Texas called Jade Helm 15 that Russian bots and the American alt-right media convinced most — many — Texans was an Obama plan to round up political dissidents,” Hayden said.”

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2018/05/03/former-cia-director-says-russians-spread-misinformation-jade-helm

America faces plenty of SPIN information war worries, well beyond just Trump, but Americans seem too busy fighting each other to notice the real threats from a nation torn apart by constant, aggressive domestic and foreign disinformation operations targeting the American people. And sadly, President Trump seems the most ill-equipped leader, who might be called upon to avert complete civil disorder, if this SPIN war spirals totally out of control.

Ending on a positive note, the TRUTH is the strongest weapon against SPIN (lies), so each of us has the power to defeat SPIN in our own lives. No American is helpless or unarmed to combat SPIN – that’s the TRUTH. Just pull yourself from the partisan extremes, learn to recognize spin messaging attacks against the American people and don’t allow media and politicians’ repetitive messaging agitation propaganda make you afraid or angry. When all else fails, turn off the news media in your home for a bit and spend time with your family, do things with friends, or take up a hobby.

Trust me, that’s what I’ve been doing. Yep, more crafting pictures coming soon:-)

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Filed under General Interest, Information War, Politics

January 3, 2019 · 12:45 am

Trump’s boring re-run

President Trump cabinet meeting/Reality Presidency Show season premiere today garnered huge media coverage. Numerous comments the president made raised eyebrows and evoked critical media commentary, but the thing that struck me about this Trump show is it was a boring rerun of every other Trump show, when he’s trying to talk his way past some deepening controversy.

Trump really is a one-trick pony repeating the same media gimmicks over and over.

Today was a boring rerun of Trump’s staged attacks against his enemies. It’s just like his May 31, 2016 press conference he staged to silence the controversy over the funds from his January 2016 debate temper tantrum, where he staged a vet fundraiser rally. By the Spring of 2016, media questions started swirling about which veterans groups received funds from that January fundraiser and exactly how much money was raised:

Today, Trump repeated this same press conference, except he used his cabinet as stage props instead of some veterans, who support him.

Incoming Senator Mitt Romney penned a scathing op-ed about President Trump leadership and character for the Washington Post last night. Romney stated:

“The Trump presidency made a deep descent in December. The departures of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, the appointment of senior persons of lesser experience, the abandonment of allies who fight beside us, and the president’s thoughtless claim that America has long been a “sucker” in world affairs all defined his presidency down.

It is well known that Donald Trump was not my choice for the Republican presidential nomination. After he became the nominee, I hoped his campaign would refrain from resentment and name-calling. It did not. When he won the election, I hoped he would rise to the occasion. His early appointments of Rex Tillerson, Jeff Sessions, Nikki Haley, Gary Cohn, H.R. McMaster, Kelly and Mattis were encouraging. But, on balance, his conduct over the past two years, particularly his actions last month, is evidence that the president has not risen to the mantle of the office.”

This op-ed added to the growing criticisms of Trump’s handling of announcing a Syria pull-out via a tweet, without even informing our allies or his own national security team about the decision first. The bad press escalated with General Mattis’ resignation as Secretary of Defense, followed by Trump’s spiteful announcement he was moving up Mattis’ departure.

As criticism over both Trump’s Syria decision and how he went about it escalated, the president began ramping up his mean tweeting in recent days. He retaliated over the weekend when General McChrystal answered a reporter’s question about whether he would ever serve in the Trump presidency and whether he believes the president is immoral. McChrystal, I believe, answered the questions honestly. In typical Trump fashion, Trump decided to wage the only strategy he knows – a vicious divide and conquer attack.

We now have a POTUS committed to playing American generals against each other and even more disturbing, publicly undercutting top retired generals to curry favor with the troops. He is undercutting confidence in the US military and its top leaders, all to win spin cycles…

The truth is these retired generals should tread very cautiously criticizing the President and avoid it. Engaging in public spin attacks back and forth with Trump will only damage military morale and could easily begin to damage confidence in America’s top military leadership. If these retired generals or former Trump administration officials feel strongly about Trump’s competency, conduct in office and handling of national security matters, the proper way to air that would be to testify to Congress, under oath.

The real big picture threat is America’s adversaries are watching the Trump Reality Presidency Show and they understand that Trump’s shallow narcissism makes him so easy to manipulate. Since Erdogan talked Trump into pulling out of Syria, both Kim Jong Un and Putin made public overtures to Trump about more meetings. They obviously feel confident they can easily play Trump again. All it takes is stroking Trump’s ego, by praising him as a strong leader. How much Trump will sell America down the river remains to be seen, but for a reality check, Trump doesn’t bother with facts or details.

The media latched onto a Trump comment in his presser that speaks to Trump’s colossal ignorance about American foreign policy and history. Trump touted the Soviet view on their invasion of Afghanistan, not the Reagan foreign policy view. It was a surreal comment coming from a sitting American president:

Eli Stokols‏Verified account@EliStokols

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Trump: “The reason Russia was in Afghanistan was because terrorists were going into Russia.” This is simply not true. The Soviet Union ventured into Afghanistan as part of its effort to prop up communism abroad, not because terrorists were striking the Soviet homeland.

Aaron BlakeVerified account@AaronBlake

Trump’s bizarre history lesson on the Soviet Union, Russia and Afghanistan https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/01/02/trumps-bizarre-history-lesson-soviet-union-russia-afghanistan/…

5:10 PM – 2 Jan 2019

I also commented on a tweet by a top Trump Spin Commando this afternoon and added a few comments beyond that:

libertybelle‏@october601

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Any Republican who sticks his head up to rally opposition or a GOP insurgency against Trump will quickly be knocked out by Trump’s Spin Commandos. To wage a real insurgency against Trump would require careful planning & a comprehensive strategy to neutralize Trump’s Spin forces.

Kurt SchlichterVerified account@KurtSchlichter

This is cliche ridden hash. Romney is trying to help his clique within the elite retake their position as the “conservative leadership” even though we fired those failures after…

3:55 PM – 2 Jan 2019

libertybelle‏@october6018 hours ago

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When Repubs respond to Trump outrages, they are playing into Trump’s spin game – that just feeds Trump and his Spin Commandos more free ammo. They wage smear campaign, mock, belittle… marginalize these attacks on Trump quickly. The real stakes are winning hearts and minds.

libertybelle‏@october6018 hours ago

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Those Repubs against Trump would be smarter to ignore Trump’s outrages as much as possible, and use their public platforms to quietly work to pull Americans away from extreme partisanship, toward a saner middle ground.

libertybelle‏@october6018 hours ago

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Retired generals are perfectly situated to be apolitical public leaders. They could work hard to unify Americans around core American principles, good citizenship, and treating everyone with respect.

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Filed under Foreign Policy, General Interest, Politics, Twitter Tales

January 1, 2019 · 10:42 am

Happy New Year

http://www.vintageimages.org/index.php/Birds/4338588582_c001d77703-Vintage-Post-Card_x

Many thanks for stopping by and reading my blog.

A new year has arrived, meaning it’s time for a bit of looking back over the past.

Kind words matter.

Some kind words and a bit of a nudge from a friend inspired the creation of this blog in December of 2012. For decades, I had longed to write, but fear held me back from even trying – fear of lacking the writing skills, fear of lacking the creativity, fear of failure. With extreme trepidation and totally clueless on even what exactly a blog is, I began typing away.

It’s hard to believe that I’ve written 1,438 blog posts since then. This blog remains just a small, sort of backwoods of the internet type blog, one that reflects my views and values. I am a homemaker and full-time caregiver, not a professional writer. Sticking to writing what I believe is honest and truthful motivates me to keep this blog going, not any desire for popularity or monetizing this endeavor.

For several years, I’ve begun the new year announcing a resolution to attempt to move my blog away from so much politics and move more toward commentary on cultural topics. Glancing back through some of last year’s posts, it’s obvious that my resolution to write less about politics, like most New Year’s resolutions, was not kept.

Last year was a very hard year for me in my real life, with my husband’s medical problems and changes in the amount of assistance he needs with daily tasks. Blogging often fell to the wayside, so for 2019, my goal (not a resolution) is simply to get some blog posts written on a regular basis.

Suggestions, comments and criticisms are always welcome, as long as it isn’t a heap of name-calling.

Category Archives: General Interest

No Intelligent Life Left Here

More questions about the Covington/Phillips video

Twitter cover-up?

Another worrying sign

About rumor control

Missed signals beyond the SPIN noise

“Crisis”

Trump’s boring re-run

Happy New Year

A favorite Christmas song

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