Category Archives: Information War

November 17, 2017 · 2:45 pm

A “nuclear” scorched earth information war

Yesterday, Senator Al Franken was exposed, with a photo of him groping the breasts of a fellow USO performer, while she slept.  The media went crazy, Franken apologized, but there’s now an ethics investigation in the works to investigate this matter.   A day later, some #Resist feminists are seething, because the woman, Leeann Tweeden,  is a big Trump supporter and has sexually-provocative photos on her facebook page, including when she posed for Playboy.  In interviews yesterday, she wore glasses and dressed modestly.

By yesterday evening, tweets were circulating among journalists that Roger Stone tweeted in the early morning hours that Franken was next up for exposure for “grabby” behavior.  Then later in the morning Tweeden’s story came out.

The “Me Too” feminist rallying cry, urging women to speak out about sexual harassment and assault,  is heading toward where the Left’s “fake news” is now.  Trump’s sleaze master, Roger Stone, is going to hijack the phrase and use it as a weapon of mass destruction against the media and Left.  Trump is already onboard with this plan, gleefully tweeting about Franken last night.  Trump will begin to be the new ringmaster railing against the Left’s sexual abusers and showcasing their “Me Too” offenders….  This is going to get very ugly, very fast.

The #Resist feminists are crying foul, raging that this Franken story is all a setup.  And it sure looks like it.  The Moore story was a setup too, because the Washington Post has expended a lot of energy and effort to turn over every stone in Moore’s life.  This morning Moore’s wife was railing that the Washington Post has come down there and talked to every person they have ever known.  Journalists were tweeting about how this is “journalism” and how it’s done.

It’s journalism in the vein of what used to be called “tabloid  journalism”.  If you only seek negative information about a person and exclude all positive information, that’s really just character assassination and that’s where American journalism is in the era of #Resist to take down Trump by any means necessary and Trump’s war against the media and Left.

The “Me Too” campaign is now going to become a “nuclear” scorched earth information war.    Where America will be when this war is over is hard to tell, but I feel confident in predicting it won’t be “great”.

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

November 16, 2017 · 9:37 am

Kind of too little, too late

Since Hillary lost the election many women are very angry.   The Left, which includes most of the mainstream media began a concerted effort to delegitimize President Trump immediately following the election.   The Left including many prominent Democrats in Congress,  engaged in disgusting spin efforts to convince Americans we needed to ditch the electoral college and they hyped “Russian collusion” hysteria.  There were even bizarre hysterical tweets from people like Rosie O’Donnell promoting the idea of a military coup , with Congress installing one of the generals as president, all to stop President Trump’s inauguration.

When all that failed, Hollywood leftists boycotted Trump’s inauguration and the media went full-court press on trashing the inauguration with endless unfavorable comparisons to President Obama’s inaugurations.  Still not willing to accept defeat, a day after his inauguration large crowds of mostly women took to the streets,  to ostensibly advocate for women’s rights and other causes.  The organizers in America were an assortment of far-left extremists.  This Women’s March had foreign leftists staging protests too, but in America the march really was all about protesting President Trump’s election.  Ridiculous pink “pussy hats” become the symbolic protest gear, along with some women donning an array of vulgar lady parts costumes.  The march also attracted an assortment of leftover 60s radicals and has-been feminists, in addition celebrities, like Madonna and Ashley Judd, spewed venomous tirades against Trump.

A lot has happened since the Women’s March and although the #Resist movement still goes on,  loyalty to Hillary Clinton within the Democratic Party has begun to fray.  Hillary has spent the year writing a sore-loser tell-all, What Happened, blaming everyone imaginable for her loss.  She is stuck on relitigating the election.  Her most loyal sidekick, Huma Abedin, is still by her side, while Abedin’s ex., Anthony Weiner, is off to serve a 21-month prison sentence for sending obscene material to a minor.

With Donna Brazile coming out with a book and publicly challenging Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign organization and ground game, it’s obvious there’s a revolt going on inside the DNC.  Finally, some top Dems want to break free of the Clintons.  There are plenty of opportunities for Democrats, sans the Clintons, to make huge in-roads on winning back seats in Congress, but also in state elections.  Trump’s very high negatives has opened that door.

It’s been a bizarre year for feminist hysterics.  It started with the pink pussy hats bedecked women screeching and caterwauling about remaining  “I’m With Her” and now it’s evolved to “Me too”, where women are seething about men who sexually abuse women.

After decades of reports about Bill Clinton’s mistreatment of women, to include a credible allegation of rape and documented obstruction of justice during the Starr investigation, to silence women, finally a few in the media have spoken out about Bill Clinton’s behavior.  Of course, even more alarming was Hillary Clinton’s role in orchestrating smear campaigns against these women.  The Left can’t do a “reckoning” of Bill Clinton’s treatment of women, without doing a “reckoning” of Hillary’s too.  And they need to do a reckoning of how the liberal establishment and mainstream media aided in covering up and doing damage control for the Clintons all these years.  Without the media collusion to run the Clinton spin, the Clintons would have long ago been disgraced and “reckoned with”.

Now there’s a power struggle in the Democratic Party going on, to finally free the party of the Clintons, making it politically advantageous to start publicly speaking the truth about the Clintons.  When the Clintons were still a political asset, with their endless appetite for raising big bucks, much of which they feathered their own nest with, the Democratic Party and mainstream media were willing to sell the Clinton talking points verbatim and do decades of damage control for Bill Clinton.  Now, that there’s a feminist lynch mob mentality taking hold about sexual predators, it’s expedient for Democrats to break free of the Clintons.  Gloria Steinem’s “one free grope” will live on in infamy as the definitive moral caliber of the modern feminist movement.

Finally, political expediency has emboldened a few in the media to speak out about the Clintons and  this self-serving bit of honesty is being touted as “courageous”.   If the winds of politics change, it seems a safe bet that these courageous few will backpedal completely and be back to carry water for the Clintons again.

Several pundits on the right are scathingly pointing out the galling hypocrisy of this  “I Believe Juanita” chorus from some on the Left.  Just like the media ran the GOP Insurgency to throw the GOP primary into chaos, the Dump on Trump in the general, and the yearlong #Resist/Russian Collusion hysteria, they ran damage control spin for the Clintons since 1992.  That’s whole lot of years of sitting on news stories to prop up the Clintons.

When you look at FOX News’s absurd coverage of President Trump, with the Pravda aura to the spin, well, the mainstream media doesn’t realize they looked that absurd for decades doing damage control spin for the Clintons.  Many liberal journalists now spend hours dissecting Fox’s spin and it’s obvious there is media collusion at Fox News with the Trump people, coordinating the talking points.  However, these same journalists still lack any self-awareness that their news organizations avidly participated in the 2016 information war and the #Resist propaganda effort.  That a few on the Left now want to dump the Clintons for political expediency does nothing to atone for decades of media collusion to prop up the Clintons.

Kind of too little too late.

 

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Filed under Corrupt Media Collusion, General Interest, Information War, Nasty Women, Politics, ThatWitch2016, The Media

November 13, 2017 · 1:28 pm

A nation torn apart

Over the weekend, Andrew McCarthy wrote a compelling piece highlighting the differences between the Trump Russian collusion investigation and Hillary’s email server investigation. It’s worth reading: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/453659/mueller-paul-manafort-investigation-hardball-tactics

President Trump went off on his favorite tangent, lambasting political hacks in our intelligence community, over the weekend.  Of course, the mainstream media rushed to condemn his comments and predictably, former top intelligence officials, James Clapper and John Brennan, took to the Sunday shows to berate him and blabber on about how Trump can easily be played by the Russians.

I’ve debated how to explain the problems I see with both sides in this flame-throwing.  First, off Clapper, Brennan and Comey are all tied up in the infamous Trump dossier business, which is tied up with GPS Fusion, which was hired and paid by Clinton and the DNC to destroy Trump.  Those three briefed Trump, before his inauguration, on the dossier and they rolled out a report on Russian interference in the election at the same time.  That report was just recycled information from previous reports, yet those three top intelligence officials spun that in the media as if it was new information, bolstering the Clinton camp’s “Russian collusion” hysteria.   Clapper, Brennan and Comey played a key role in working to delegitimize Trump.  That’s the truth.

When Comey was fired he leaked his FBI notes to the media, through a friend, and later reports indicate those notes did contain classified material, yet the media glossed over that and ran full throttle on the Russian collusion storyline.  It’s easy to understand why Trump doesn’t trust anything Comey, Brennan, or Clapper say.  During the Obama years, a lot of intelligence was mishandled. Hillary’s private email server became the public target of Republicans, but the Obama administration, starting with President Obama, who used a private gmail account to communicate sensitive information with staffers, mishandled sensitive information – he emailed Hillary using that gmail account at her private server email address.

There are many “experts” who rush to say, the president can handle sensitive information however he wants and it’s “legal”, but that misses the entire point about sensitive information.  “Legal” doesn’t really matter if the actions compromise sensitive information, because what matters is that everyone entrusted with handling sensitive information do his/her best to insure that information is handled with due diligence.  Protecting the information is what matters; not parsing over legal technicalities.

Hillary’s server jeopardized highly sensitive information in many, many ways.  Top Obama officials, including President Obama, were involved in the email chains, containing classified information.  Every insecure email account, not just Hillary’s homebrew server, put that information at risk.  The most amazing aspect of Comey’s bizarre statements on Hillary’s server, was how he underplayed the possibility that the classified information was accessed by hostile intelligence.  The moment sensitive information is mishandled, like being stored on an insecure homebrew server, with people managing the email system, who do not possess security clearances, that information was definitely considered compromised.  Hillary used primarily her blackberry to send and read emails.  She had 13 blackberries that she “misplaced” or couldn’t locate and NONE of them were turned over to the FBI.

The entire media/Clinton/DNC #Resist effort has been a year-long sorest loser temper tantrum to take down Trump.  That is the truth. The other truth is Trump has placed fighting the #Resist effort above his duties as President. America is suffering from this ongoing 2016 election debacle.  It is also true that Trump is unfit to be president and he does not care to learn about policy or pay attention to details.  It is also true that Hillary, with her callous and deliberate abuse of her position and grossly negligent handling of highly sensitive information is unfit to be president too and she should not have a security clearance ever.  However, I think she still has her security clearance, despite the piles of classified information she mishandled, the files under subpoena her lawyers destroyed, and despite not turning over any of her 13 blackberries and some of her laptops to the FBI.  The media glossed over Hillary’s email scandal and Comey did too, because to prosecute Hillary would have taken down the Obama administration.  So, instead, Obama caved to the Clinton pressure and the Obama Justice Department gave cover to Hillary Clinton.

The mainstream media can collude to just not cover certain stories or to give a quick report, then bury the story. When Clinton flacks say, “it’s time to move on”, the mainstream media takes that marching order and does damage control for the Clintons.

Into this mix, it’s increasingly obvious the Trump campaign was extremely corrupt too and considering Trump prided himself on being a great crony capitalist, this should not surprise anyone.  Once Donald Trump, Jr. admitted he went into that meeting with the Russian lawyer, expecting to get Russian government dirt on Hillary, President Trump’s denials of “Russian collusion” fell apart.

America had two totally corrupt candidates, who are determined to fight to the bitter end to destroy each other.  America is caught in the media crossfire of this brutal information war of attrition. There won’t really be any winners at the end of this, just a nation torn apart by relentless partisan fighting.

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Filed under Corrupt Media Collusion, General Interest, Information War, Politics, Public Corruption

November 8, 2017 · 12:23 pm

Seeing Russia through your “Windows”

In our hyper-partisan political environment in America, do our intelligence agencies fathom the full scope of the Russians’ information war?

Politicians on the left want to focus solely on Russian interference in the 2016 election that promoted Trump and disparaged Hillary, but the Russian activities are much broader, also targeting fringe political extremists, various demographics, and the political left.  It has also been reported that they even identify soldiers, veterans and their families with messaging meant to undermine morale and confidence in the U.S. government and the military.

The Daily Beast, a leftist site, has a report today: Exclusive: Russia Activated Twitter Sleeper Cells for Election Day Blitz.  Their investigation examined election day tweets from Russian trolls in St. Petersburg, all geared toward promoting Trump and spewing doubt about the election process.  The most interesting thing they reported is that many of these Twitter accounts go as far back as 2009, which should raise alarm bells among our intelligence agents analyzing the Russian messaging operations.

I believe the Russians were actively cultivating online messaging opportunities since the late 90s.  The very same gang-up tactics and the swarming with their messaging, to dominate and crush opposing opinions in online forums, was present on the Excite message boards during the Clinton impeachment.  In 2015, I experienced that same tactic when posting comments on some conservative news sites, which used Disqus for their comment sections.  Just like the all-American sounding names used by Russian Twitter trolls, reported in this Daily Beast article, the gang-up hit squads on Disqus, used similar names.  I am sure the Russians have online troll armies working the left-leaning sites and various sites geared toward minorities too.  Cultivating fear and discontent in American black communities has been a Kremlin focus since 1919.  In the 70s, the Saudis reportedly began pouring money into black colleges and black communities, to promote Wahhabism.  The Chinese fixated on buying American real estate and American companies, to try to “own” us.

With the complete cluelessness expressed by so many of our government leaders about the Russians’ information war against America and the West, you’d think most of these people slept through the Cold War.  Time to wake up and realize you just might be seeing Russia through your “Windows”…

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Filed under General Interest, Information War, Politics

November 6, 2017 · 11:54 am

Feeding the koi

The media ran a video yesterday of President Trump with Japan’s prime minister, Abe, engaged in a Japanese ritual of feeding koi with spoonfuls of food.  CNN ran an edited version of the event, making it look like Trump disrespected the ritual and just dumped the box of fish food in the pond:

“(CNN)President Donald Trump took a moment out of his whirlwind Japanese trip to connect with nature and feed some fish, but after a few delicate scoops, he resorted to a grand gesture met with some laughter.”

And then this:

“As an aide clapped loudly, Abe and Trump tossed spoonfuls of fish food into the pond. Then, with a look of enjoyment, Trump quickly poured his entire box of food into the pond.”

http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/06/politics/donald-trump-koi-pond-japan/index.html

A Twitter media “feeding frenzy” then occurred with the media trashing Trump for disrespecting a Japanese culture and hyping Trump’s impatience.  I expect CNN to pull that story, because it’s a deliberate distortion on what happened, meant to disparage Trump.

This morning, several news outlets have run the complete video, which clearly shows prime minister, Abe, dumping his box of fish food in the pond, after the photo-op spoonful ritual, and Trump then dumping his box of fish food into the koi pond.  Trump was following the lead of his host, which is what most people do when in a foreign country, faced with an unfamiliar custom.

When the mainstream media rails about Trump’s “fake news” charge, this deliberate distortion of the facts bolsters Trump’s charge.  In this corrupt media environment, it’s very difficult to discern facts from “fake news”.  Many mainstream journalists live on Twitter, just like Trump.  Twitter is where you can watch the media in action generating spin cycles” and that is why Trump relies on his Twitter account to engage them – it’s their battlefield.

If this deliberately distorted accounting of a news event was a  one-off mistake, Trump’s charge of  “fake news” wouldn’t have gained traction.  The truth is a large portion of the mainstream media is still running the Clinton scorched earth, looking for negative stories on Trump to hype and spin relentlessly – all to trash Trump (#Resist).  During the 2016 campaign there were many of these planned media hits against Trump, from CNN altering a Trump tweet, removing the word “Crooked” from “Crooked Hillary”, to the Alicia Machado,  Clinton orchestrated media attack on Trump.  Machado was the former beauty queen, who was groomed by Clinton operatives in the media, with hit pieces already written, before Hillary launched her debate salvo at Trump about “fat-shaming”.  The Clintons, colluding with the mainstream media, orchestrated the entire Machado scorched earth attack.

Since Trump’s surprise win last November, the Clinton scorched earth machine, which includes many in the mainstream media,  moved  to the #Resist attacks, which are  really just relentless scorched earth attacks to delegitimize Trump’s presidency and to sell the American people on impeaching him.    Too many in the media were, and still are willing accomplices, running, first the GOP Insurgency, to “burn the GOP to the ground promoting Trump, then switching to the general election Clinton strategy, “Trump the fascist” attacks to cast Trump as worse than Hitler.

FOX News has moved into scorched earth mode propping up Trump and working tirelessly to trash the mainstream (liberal) media.  The truth is most of the mainstream media are liberals and readily spread Clinton talking points and specious reporting, especially on Twitter.  Twitter is a proverbial watching sausages being made experience, where all the news scraps and mystery meat wild claims get ground up and squeezed out packaged as “news”.  Trump’s “fake news” charge resonates with millions of Americans, because so many of the mainstream media’s attack stories about Trump fall apart as false or wildly distorted, as in this deceptively edited Trump dumping the box of fish food into the koi pond story.  That editing and storyline was made to make Trump look disrespectful of a foreign culture (vulgar).

The reverse side of this information war, is Trump and his info warriors have decided to fight the same kind of information war as the Clintons/Left wage, which is an all-out scorched earth, no rules apply info war.  Trump and his info warriors, are now operating like the Clintons – “by any means necessary”.

As this information war intensifies, it will become much harder for anyone to discern the truth or facts, which will lead to more chaos and overreactions in America.  Like I’ve been saying, repeatedly, in this endless scorched earth information war raging in America – the only winner is Putin.

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

November 5, 2017 · 1:34 pm

The real winner in 2016 was Putin

Donna Brazile, the long-time Clinton crony, who unscrupulously passed CNN debate questions to Hillary during the 2016 campaign, came out with revelations that have Democrats, political pundits and Trump ranting about how the Clinton campaign controlled the DNC and rigged the Dem. primary against Bernie Sanders.  Brazile claims that the Clinton campaign poured money into the dead broke DNC and she also claims the Clinton campaign controlled the DNC hirings and messaging completely.

None of this is surprising really.  The Clintons tried to “rig” the GOP primary too, but Trump and his followers won’t ever admit that.  A large segment of the mainstream media operated like a PR branch of the Clinton campaign too.  Those Wikileaks leaked emails showed obvious cases of media collusion with the DNC to spread Clinton campaign talking points messaging.

The Clintons were running Bill Clinton’s triangulation strategy, trying to paint Bernie as a far-left kook, Trump as a far-right kook, which was supposed to clear the middle for Hillary to prance back into the White House.

The interesting detail, still unknown, is how much the Trump campaign knew about the Clinton campaign’s “pied piper” strategy.  Who taught Trump how to spin, with the relentless repetition of his mindless slogans.  Who masterminded the big Potemkin rallies, to give the visual of massive support?  Did Trump have any communications with his old golfing buddy, Bill Clinton, during his GOP insurgency, beyond the one reported phone call before Trump entered the race?  Were any of Trump’s inner-circle of advisers in contact with the Clinton campaign during Trump’s GOP insurgency?

Once again, Trump received BILLIONS of dollars in free media, much of it from liberal media, not just FOX News, during his GOP insurgency.  That constant drumbeat of messaging selling Trump, like, “he’s winning in all the polls”, “don’t you need to support the winner?”, “Trump’s a great businessman”, “Trump doesn’t play by the rules – he’s great”, sold Trump and it marginalized every other GOP candidate.  The liberal media gave Trump the spotlight, 24/7, during the GOP primary, because they wanted the GOP insurgency to succeed and Hillary to win.  That’s the truth.

Trump was a media manufactured fraud perpetrated on the Republican Party and the America people.

The Clintons not only rigged the DNC against Bernie, they had their friends in the liberal media rigging the GOP primary for Trump too.

However, once Trump had learned how to use spin, especially the scorched earth information warfare, that the Clintons introduced in the 90s, with their “war room”, their pivot, in early 2016, to “Trump the fascist” messaging backfired.  Trump learned to just plow through their messaging and relentlessly counterattack, by taking their messaging attacks and throwing them back at the Dems and the liberal media running the Clinton’s scorched earth, Dump on Trump attacks.  Whenever the media floats a new talking point, Trump neutralizes them by using their messaging as weapons against them.   Trump uses the “fake news” charge constantly and it’s one of his favorite attack lines, but “fake news” was a messaging attack started by the Clintons and liberal media in December 2016, as they were trying to delegitimize Trump’s winning the election.

The liberal media played an instrumental role in the corruption in 2016, so their donning the role of truth-tellers and guardians of reporting facts to keep the public informed comes across as mostly phony.  It’s hard to take someone like Chuck Todd seriously as an objective analyst, when his media collusion with Debbie Wasserman Schultz  was exposed in a Wikileaks leaked stolen email.  He also was a big player in painting Trump as a fascist messaging, which was orchestrated by team Clinton.   A Washington Post reporter has researched every bit of Trump Foundation corruption, in painstaking detail, but he completely ignores Clinton Foundation corruption.  Most of the liberal media glossed over the Clinton email scandal, selling the Clinton talking points to exonerate Hillary at every juncture.   The liberal mainstream media happily sold the Clinton talking point “time to move on”, with little question,  when James Comey presented his bizarre fact-finding presser on Hillary’s email server.  They also glossed over Loretta Lynch’s infamous tarmac meeting with Bill Clinton the week before Comey’s caving.

For a retrospective on Hillary’s dishonesty, it’s helpful to look back at her first statements about her private email server, where almost every “fact” she provided was a lie.  Here’s the link to her first press conference explaining her home-brewed private email server:

In this corrupt media environment, the Russians are having a field day leaking stolen emails, to fuel partisan divides, spreading wild conspiracy theories and spin to fuel more divides in America.  Widespread public corruption provides the Russians a target rich environment to run their destabilization operations.  Here is a link to a study, The Kremlin Playbook, which details how the Russians operated their destabilization efforts in Eastern and Central Europe.  They have been using the same playbook in Western Europe and America too.

A large portion of the mainstream (liberal) media is as corrupt and engaged in spreading shameless agitation propaganda and distorted partisan “news”, attacking Trump and towing the Democrats spin, as Fox News is at spreading Trump spin.

In this morally bankrupt vacuum, where the truth and factual reporting take a backseat to advancing partisan agendas, Americans are manipulated and brainwashed constantly.  America’s enemies don’t have to work hard to foment chaos constantly.  It’s exhausting trying to get to ground truth when the spin by American partisans and our enemies’ disinformation create so much confusion and chaos, that on any given day you can watch CNN, MSNBC and FOX News and come away thinking they are reporting on different planets.  You can read Huffington Post headlines and Breitbart headlines to get a taste of the extreme partisanship, but I wonder about how their “reporting” impacts the viewpoints of their readers, who trust their reporting is factual.

The Democrats are in disarray.  The Republicans are in disarray too.

This morning I read a depressing article, A year after Trump’s election, York, Pa., is forever changed, written by Matt Viser,from The Boston Globe,  The story is about how high school students have become extremely politically and racially polarized, behaving like enemy camps in the York County School of Technology, a vocational high school in York, Pa.:

“It’s the kind of place where a simple Trump sign or cardboard cutout is seen by some as a show of pride in working-class values, but by others as a racist affront. Since Trump’s election, York residents have been un-friending one another on Facebook, avoiding one another at grocery store checkout lines, and leaving churches whose pews now feel uncomfortable.

Over the course of dozens of interviews here in recent weeks, it was not uncommon for lifelong residents to tear up when speaking about their community and the once-close ties that are now growing frayed.

The experience at York Tech since Trump’s election — as parents, elected leaders, and school administrators grappled with the fallout from racial outbursts at the school — reflects the uneasiness with which these forces continue to percolate, often just below the surface.

Outwardly, life in York County and its vocational school seems to have returned to something like normal as students settle into a new school year and Trump’s first year winds down. But the class resentments, racism, and xenophobia that became flashpoints during the election have hardened, not healed.”

https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2017/11/04/the-fabric-community-frays-under-trump/YETy78ylmu2kWDGc2jsXHO/amp.html

While Hillary Clinton continues her sorest loser ever campaign and Trump tweets on, the American people get battered 24/7 with endless scorched earth information barrages.

The real winner in 2016 was Putin  The Russians don’t have to work hard to divide and conquer us with the Clintons, Trump and the media in America working tirelessly to that end.

So much “winning”…

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

November 2, 2017 · 2:11 pm

Just a link

Here’s the link to my August 31, 2o17 blog post:

How To Defeat Scorched Earth Information Warfare

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November 2, 2017 · 2:06 pm

Tall order there

Until this 2016 Russian collusion hysteria, I believe our government was not as attuned to the Russian information warfare tactics, as they should have been.    Over the past couple decades, I believe the Russians have been actively involved in regaining their active measures level as before the collapse of the Soviet Union.  The West has now taken notice of the Russian information warfare threat, but in typical American partisan fashion, the mainstream media and Left only want to hype the activities, by framing in terms of “Russian collusion stole the election from Hillary”.  Trump and FOX are attempting to discount almost all of the information about the Russian active measures, except to try to cast it as Hillary was colluding with the Russians with the Trump dossier.

Both sides are missing the point.  The Russians have been actively fomenting partisan rancor, fueling fears and conspiracy theories within many American political groups and especially trying to incite extreme fringe political factions for many years – not just during the 2016 presidential election.

A story in the Texas Tribune yesterday reported:

“Last year, two Russian Facebook pages organized dueling rallies in front of the Islamic Da’wah Center of Houston, according to information released by U.S. Sen. Richard Burr, a North Carolina Republican.”

https://www.texastribune.org/2017/11/01/russian-facebook-page-organized-protest-texas-different-russian-page-l/?utm_campaign=trib-social&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_content=9091521508

The Russians, using facebook pages, incited two opposing groups of partisans to protest in front of a mosque in Texas.  Since the American government is just now realizing the scope of the Russians online information warfare activities, it will be interesting to see how large the Russians operations are and how long they have been running some of these operations.

Here’s a 65 page preliminary list the House intel released on Russian bot handles on Twitter: https://democrats-intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/exhibit_b.pdf

The Democrats are gleefully talking about the Russian- funded facebook ads meant to disparage Hillary, as ammunition against Trump, but I suspect the Congressional investigations into the Russians info war against America are just scratching the surface.  I suspect the Russians ran active measures to agitate BLM, the Tea Party activism, the Jade Helm hysteria, the Sandy Hook conspiracies, the President Obama birther crap and many more.   Much of the messaging is recycled.  I remember in the past year seeing a map meant to incite a different conspiracy theory being retweeted and it was the same Jade Helm map that had circulated during the Jade Helm hysteria in 2015.

The Chicago Tribune reports:

“The ads released Wednesday cover only a small part of how the Russians targeted Americans on Facebook and other American-owned social media platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and Pinterest during the 2016 presidential campaign.

The biggest impact, several independent researchers have said, was through ordinary free posts by Russian-backed Facebook groups. Those posts reached up to 126 million Americans, Facebook said, far more than the 11.4 million who saw the ads.

These Facebook ads, like several others that had emerged in news reports over the past several weeks, had the apparent goal of needling Americans’ cultural sore spots.

“The strategy is to take a crack in our society and turn it into a chasm,” Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, said during the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing.”

http://www.chicagotribune.com/bluesky/technology/ct-russian-facebook-ads-20171102-story.html

The mainstream media is hyping the Russians social media footprint and alluding to the FOX News bizarre Trumpathon propaganda being connected to the Russians, but they are blind to the fact that the Russians infiltrated the American “mainstream” media, Hollywood and American academia over the past 100 years.  They don’t have to work hard to spread their messaging in the mainstream media, with so many dupes and fellow travelers at the ready.

The American government is just now getting “woke” to the scope of the Russian information war being clandestinely waged against all of America’s valued institutions and the American people. Even the US military and veterans are being targeted by the Russians using social media:

“Russian trolls and others aligned with the Kremlin are injecting disinformation into streams of online content flowing to American military personnel and veterans on Twitter and Facebook, according to an Oxford University study released Monday.

The researchers found fake or slanted news from Russian-controlled accounts are mixing with a wide range of legitimate content consumed by veterans and active-duty personnel in their Facebook and Twitter news feeds. These groups were found to be reading and sharing articles on conservative political thought, articles on right-wing politics in Europe and writing touting various conspiracy theories.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/10/09/russian-operatives-used-twitter-and-facebook-to-target-veterans-and-military-personnel-study-says/?utm_term=.07785202b04chttps://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/10/09/russian-operatives-used-twitter-and-facebook-to-target-veterans-and-military-personnel-study-says/?utm_term=.07785202b04c

Kind of hard to play offense in an information war, when you are years behind in even realizing you’ve been under attack and the enemy has successfully set-up shop spreading disinformation using media front operations that millions of Americans trust.

The grease that keeps the Russian active measures churning is corruption.  They feed and exploit the corruption in the countries they target.  The Clinton and Trump wholesale public corruption enabled the Russians  to exploit our political system.   It’s a sure bet the Russians have enough dirt on the Clintons and Trump to play both of them or strategically leak to keep the partisan rancor in America churning.  Dealing with the widespread corruption in both political parties is a national security imperative.

Trying to shut down Russian messaging is like trying to patch a dam that has already collapsed.  Educating Americans about the Russian disinformation will serve better than hysterically trying to stop all their disinformation.  Sure, it’s important to identify the Russian bots and troll farms and shut them down, but “influence operations” work because they are finding messages that Americans are buying into.

Winning the hearts and minds of as many Americans as possible, to becoming good citizens committed to protecting and defending The Constitution, is the offensive strategy we need to defeat the Russian information war.  The only way for America to win is to find a way to unite more Americans around American values, American institutions and most of all around The Constitution.  Tall order there.

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Filed under American Character, Corrupt Media Collusion, General Interest, Information War, Military, Politics

October 27, 2017 · 11:03 pm

Trump’s setting the stage for firing Mueller

There’s more chaos  ready to explode in the endless scorched earth info war.   Trump, his media shock troops and FOX News have spent this past week going full hysteria mode about the Russian dossier being a Clinton dirty trick and the Uranium One deal, under the Obama administration.  They are setting the stage for Trump to fire Robert Mueller.  The goal was to galvanize both the Republicans in Congress and Trump followers  to unite behind Trump.

Tonight CNN reported:

“Washington (CNN)A federal grand jury in Washington, DC, on Friday approved the first charges in the investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller, according to sources briefed on the matter.

The charges are still sealed under orders from a federal judge. Plans were prepared Friday for anyone charged to be taken into custody as soon as Monday, the sources said. It is unclear what the charges are.”

Trump is using the Clinton’s Starr character assassination strategy.  Justice and the rule of law will take another hit, but Trump, colluding with FOX News, to run this smear campaign 24/7, against Robert Mueller and throw out endless red herrings about “BUT Hillary”, has ginned up plenty of Republicans to back him.  This is the same strategy the Clintons have used for decades.  The Republican Party has sunk to being just as corrupt as the Clinton machine.
 
The level of partisan anger assures more chaos for America, with no end in sight for the scorched earth information war tearing America apart.

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Filed under Corrupt Media Collusion, General Interest, Information War, Politics, Public Corruption

October 19, 2017 · 9:07 am

Mutually Assured Destruction

“In the nuclear age, the revised maxim might well be amplified — but not, as might be expected, by inserting the word ‘nuclear’. For if the nuclear power now available were unleashed and not merely maintained as a deterrent, its use would mean ‘chaos’ not ‘war’, since war is organised action, which could not be continued in a state of chaos. The nuclear deterrent, however, does not apply and cannot be applied to the deterrence of subtler forms of aggression. Through its unsuitability for the purpose it tends to stimulate and encourage them. The necessary maxim is now ‘If you wish for peace, understand war — particularly the guerrilla and subversive forms of war.”

page 361, Chapter on Guerrilla Warfare of Strategy, written by B.H. Liddell Hart, Copyright Faber & Faber, Ltd. London, England 1954, 1967

President Trump loves the military…

He wants his followers to know he is a fighter.

His political operatives touted him as the GOP Insurgent.

He won the 2016 scorched earth information war and defeated not only Hillary Clinton, but many in the mainstream media, who were colluding with her to try to destroy Trump with damaging stories. The Russians actively participated in America’s 2016 information war too.

This week is a typical “squirmish” in America’s endless scorched earth  information war.  These skirmishes consist of the media and Trump engaged in short-lived, emotionally intense battles for control of the 24/7 news cycle.  Both sides go “nuclear”, without any concerns about collateral damage or fallout, because after all, this is a war of words and no one is literally dying, right?

This week’s Trump sideshow is a typical Trump diversion.  He wasn’t man enough to just admit he hadn’t called the families of these recently fallen soldiers, so he turned the question into an attack on President Obama and other recent presidents.  He is the ultimate Mr. Whataboutism.  He will never admit to any weakness or mistake.

President Trump lies, as often and as outrageously as necessary, until he provokes his opponents to overreact.  His lies are “attacks” – they are his weapons and he uses them ruthlessly.  Once his opponents overreact, he will pick apart their statements looking for untruths or bits and pieces he can manipulate to discredit them.  He will lob his “alternative facts”, wrap himself in the American flag and borrow the honor of  “the generals” to sway his followers to remain loyal.

This week’s “squirmish” is just a slight plot change from Trump’s 2016 vet fundraiser.

Trump’s vet fundraiser, January 28. 2016 was a Trumper tantrum retaliation against FOX News and Megyn Kelly.  Trump claimed his fundraiser raised over 6 million dollars and he personally pledged a million dollar donation.

In February 2016, a Weekly Standard reporter contacted the Trump Foundation for information on the fundraiser:

“On Thursday, I contacted the Donald J. Trump Foundation by email with a few questions about how the $6 million had been or was being disbursed. Five minutes later, I received a phone call from Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s presidential campaign manager. Lewandowski said a list of the recipients had been made public and that more recipients were being added all the time. How much had those recipients received? Lewandowski couldn’t, or wouldn’t, say. As a non-profit organization, he said, the Trump Foundation would release all the required details of its disbursements at the end of the fiscal year. To find out before then, he said, I’d have to contact the recipients themselves.

“The list is publicly available,” he said. “You can do your homework and ask the veterans’ organizations.”

Why wouldn’t the Trump Foundation want to publicize how much it had donated? (Especially given the fact that in recent years, Trump’s charity organization had given more money to the Clinton Foundation than to veterans.) And why, when asking about the Foundation’s disbursements, had a representative of the campaign called? With no other options, however, I took Lewandowki’s advice.”

http://www.weeklystandard.com/some-vet-groups-still-waiting-for-trump-foundation-checks/article/2001154

Months later reporters began asking more questions about which vet charities received that money and if Trump had made good on his million dollar pledge.  On May 28, 2016,Trump staged a big show where he attacked the media and had his million dollar check for a vet charity:

  “As recently as last week, Trump’s campaign manager had insisted that the mogul had already given that money away. But that was false: Trump had not.

In recent days, The Washington Post and other media outlets had pressed Trump and his campaign for details about how much the fundraiser had actually raised and whether Trump had given his portion.

The candidate refused to provide details. On Monday, a Post reporter used Twitter — Trump’s preferred social-media platform — to search publicly for any veterans groups that had received Trump’s money.”

Later Monday evening, Trump called the home of James K. Kallstrom, a former FBI official who is chairman of the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation. The charity aids families of fallen Marines and federal law enforcement officers.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/05/24/four-months-later-donald-trump-says-he-gave-1-million-to-veterans-group/?utm_term=.471cc9ad77be

Trump was the one who politicized his vet fundraiser, in fact, the entire fundraiser was a political stunt.  Just like in previous “skirmishes” Trump goes nuclear with his war of words, but the media and Left go nuclear too.

On Monday, a reporter asked President Trump why he hadn’t commented on the recent deaths of American soldiers in Niger.

President Trump hadn’t called the families of those fallen soldiers, but instead of saying that, he attacked President Obama and other presidents:

“If you look at President Obama and other presidents, most of them didn’t make calls — a lot of them didn’t make calls — I like to make calls when it’s appropriate,” Trump said at a news conference in the Rose Garden when asked about why he had not addressed the recent deaths of American troops in Niger.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-s-false-claim-about-obama-fallen-soldiers-n811206

The media and former Obama officials immediately countered Trump’s assertion and General Dempsey, who has tried to remain apolitical, also countered Trump’s assertion.

President Trump then inserted General Kelly and “generals” into the controversy, telling reporters to ask them if President Obama had called the families of fallen soldiers.  General Kelly’s son was killed in action.

At this point, the “facts” seem to indicate that President Obama did not call General Kelly when his son was killed in action.  However, at an event honoring Gold Star families, the Kellys sat at the table with First Lady, Michelle Obama, six months after the death of Kelly’s son.

President Trump then called the families of the recently fallen soldiers.  A Democratic congresswoman, who is a Trump hater heard the call.  She claims President Trump disrespected the grieving family.  There are also reports of a previous Gold Star family, whom Trump had called in June and promised them that he would personally send a check of $25,000 to them.  He never sent the check, until yesterday, after the media started asking about it.

This week’s squirmish follows the same script as his million dollar vet fundraiser boast.

The battle lines are now drawn and it is President Trump who politicized the deaths of fallen soldiers.  He is the one who refused to answer a simple question honestly on Monday.  He had not called the families of those 4 fallen soldiers, who died on October 4th, but rather than admit that, he lashed out about President Obama and other presidents not calling grieving Gold Star families.  He is also the one who interjected General Kelly into this issue and now he and the White House are borrowing on General Kelly’s honor to try and do damage control.

That is the truth.

The media and Left, smelling blood, went nuclear, digging up “facts” to not only counter Trump, but to try and turn this issue into an “impeachable offense” and destroy him.

The truth is President Trump uses the military as stage props, beginning with his “squirmish” with FOX News over Megyn Kelly’s “unfair” debate question in August of 2015, which he whined about for 8 long months.  That question was not “unfair”.  It was a question about how Trump treats women.  Trump and his media friends waged an all out attack on Megyn Kelly and Trump called Roger Ailes, trying to get Kelly removed as debate moderator.

He was trying to use his influence to damage the career of a news analyst.

Ailes refused to remove Megyn Kelly, so Trump boycotted that debate and orchestrated a “vet fundraiser”  to try and draw viewers away from watching that GOP primary debate.  He was USING the U.S. military as stage props to make himself look patriotic.

It looks like President Trump used information, that General Kelly confided in him, as a nuclear blast against President Obama, to score some cheap points in this latest squirmish. He betrayed the trust of one of his generals. It appears that President Obama had not called General Kelly when Kelly’s son died and I hope that President Obama can be a bigger man than President Trump and call General Kelly .  Apologize for the oversight, because it does appear that General Kelly was hurt by not receiving a call from his commander-in-chief.

In a few days this latest controversy will be eclipsed by another info war “skirmish”.  In fact, the Trump operatives are already launching another nuclear info war attack to discredit Robert Mueller.  President Trump was tweeting this morning, lashing out at the FBI, accusing them of colluding with the Russians.  Another diversionary tactic, but he is always “winning” the 24/7 news cycle with these nuclear blasts.  He totally eclipses everything, even the sun…

The collateral damage from scorched earth information warfare isn’t dead bodies, it’s America’s heart and soul.  The very fibers of our national character get stretched and torn a little more with each, almost daily, “squirmish” and the indiscriminate flame-throwing leaves America a toxic nuclear wasteland of angry, seething people, who hate and distrust each other.

President Trump possesses a unique gift for dividing people and playing people against each other. He is now using “the generals” in his vicious scorched earth information war.

Scorched earth information warfare’s only outcome can be the destruction of America’s national character.

And Chaos.

There are no winners.

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Filed under American Character, Culture Wars, General Interest, Information War, Military, Politics, The Media