Saturday, October 7, 2017

Is Homeland Security 'Colluding' With Putin?

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Authored by James Durso via RealClearDefense.com,

Two weeks ago, we were treated to the alarming news that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) notified 21 states their election systems were hacked by the Russians.

This was a twofer for the media as it confirmed the “Russia did it” narrative behind Hillary Clinton’s 2016 election loss, and it gave the weekend talking heads something to chatter about other than the NFL.

The alarm lasted four days, to the following Tuesday, when DHS reversed itself and admitted the Russians did not hack Wisconsin's election system.

Shoe #2 dropped on Thursday when the California Secretary of State rebutted the DHS claim and pointed out the DHS information was not just wrong but also a year late. On Friday, Texas declared it “determined conclusively” it was not targeted by hackers and asked DHS to correct its claims to the contrary.

Next time, DHS should hire the Geek Squad.

If Vladimir Putin is a religious man, he is praying that DHS keeps it up. DHS served up “fake news” so weak it was dead in one week. By comparison, the Czarist-era Protocols of the Elders of Zion is still going strong after a century.

This case will be unfurled in the future when DHS gets it right (I can dream, can’t I?) and catches Kremlin agent Boris Badenov Red-handed.

It's fun to have a laugh at a hapless bureaucrat’s expense, but these public misfires affect our foreign policy.

In today’s networked world, no news is “for local consumption only.”

DHS’s sloppy work allows the Russian government to highlight another example of the ongoing project by the secular, relativistic West to weaken Orthodox Christianity and Russian’s unique culture.

This is not overly-dramatic. In the U.S. “fascist” has latterly (since 8 November 2016) meant “Republican”; in Russia, it connotes a serious menace they have not forgotten. Russia lost about 14% of its population in World War II and felt its sacrifice in the defeat of (real) Fascism saved Europe from a negotiated peace with Hitler.

Russia has traditionally been invaded overland, to wit, the Mongols, the Swedish Empire, the Teutonic Knights, Napoleon, the Nazis. More recently it was menaced by Cold War NATO and the color revolutions. Its national security leadership now says war will be fought in the information space in addition to sea, sky, and land. The Kremlin assumes we are doing it the way they do it, only not as well.

It’s irrelevant if Putin believes everything he says; he probably believes much of it (and has a “public position” and a “private position”), and the Russian voters believe it, too. They might all be wrong, but this is politics, not a physics problem.

The Russians surely snooped on the candidates in 2016 because that’s what governments do. Putin may interpret our intramural fight over alleged Russian election hacking as the “provocation” to prepare the American people for sanctions and military action against Russia because that’s what he would do.

We cannot expect every bureaucrat to think of the foreign policy implications of his work, but slip-ups may make an adversary over-confident or, conversely, force his hand in response to a popular outcry. If the government gets it right, the U.S. will not be gifting Mr. Putin a bushel of whataboutism.

If Homeland Security had a year to get the word out, it had a year to get it right.



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A Provocation to Investigate the Las Vegas Massacre

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Cram them full of non-combustible data, chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely brilliant with information.  Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving.

— Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, 1951

It is not only information that they need – in the age of Fact, information often dominates their attention and overwhelms their capacities to assimilate it…What they need, and what they feel they need, is a quality of mind that will help them to use information and to develop reason in order to achieve lucid summations of what is going on in the world and of what may be happening within themselves.

— C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination, 1959

The main stream media’s (MSM) ongoing narrative of the massacre in Las Vegas is clearly deceptive.  This is nothing new.  That is their modus operandi.  Overwhelm people with a glut of information about a terrible tragedy and all becomes clear to people sick-at-heart over the deaths and injuries to innocent people. But it’s a false clarity engendered to confuse. Tell the story big and loud, and tell it repetitively from different angles, and It becomes hard to think straight, especially with the addition of all the sad stories of the innocent victims’ deaths and injuries.  Who can forget the false official narrative that was spun amid the grief for all the innocent victims of the attacks of September 11, 2001. Few could think straight at the time.

The MSM tells us in detail about Stephen Paddock’s gambling life, his houses and real estate dealings, how much he paid for them, his gun collection numbering 47, including all those in his hotel room (23), the alleged exact number of rounds he had in his car (1,600), how he shot from his hotel room windows, etc.  We are told what his brother and girlfriend say about him: they are shocked; he was just a regular guy; they can’t explain it.  We are told how he got the room gratis, how long he stayed there, and that he was planning to escape (they say this with a straight face). Told how many people died (59) and how many were injured (527), we remember these numbers vaguely, especially the latter.  A regular person just feels overwhelmed by all the information, the numbers; saddened and depressed for all the victims, and more afraid.

A mystery is created, an endless mystery that can be pondered and pseudo-debated ad infinitum: why would a seemingly normal, if slightly eccentric, man do such an horrendous thing? Why did he “snap”?  Was there something wrong with his brain?  But if he “snapped,” why did he buy so many guns over a long period of time?   Is snapping consistent with long-term planning?  Was he mentally ill?  The national “conversation,” as they like to call it, will revolve around guns and mental health, and the MSM will keep the story going with endless experts offering their opinions.  And that endless conversation will divert the public’s attention from the essence of this case and other matters we are not supposed to be focused on at the moment.

What the media do not say is that there is video and witness evidence that there were at least two more shooters, maybe more, one from a lower floor and another at the Bellagio Hotel that was locked down. This means that there was a conspiracy involved.  They don’t mention this so that someone like me can do so and be branded a “conspiracy theorist,” the term created by the CIA to besmirch anyone questioning the official narrative of the JFK assassination.  You will notice that I am not – purposefully – linking to this evidence that I assert exists, nor am I raising more of the many questions surrounding this case. I am hoping that readers will research these matters themselves, and if they discover that there is evidence proving there was more than one shooter, then, just as with the magic bullet absurdity in the JFK case, they will conclude, ipso facto, that the MSM are involved in a cover-up of a conspiracy, which is itself a conspiracy – a factual conspiracy, not a conspiracy theory.  And if that is so, they will ask why, and who is being protected.  Cui bono?  Why would the MSM push this narrative of the lonely crazed gunman?

People need to realize that they must be immediately skeptical of such official narratives and do their own research, and they will learn that there are excellent alternative websites that are doing real journalism and are seeking truth for truth’s sake.

While this brief article is not a “lucid summation,” as Mills suggested we need, I offer it as a concise provocation to anyone reading this to develop their own sociological imaginations to achieve such lucidity at a time when propaganda is king and the pawns are being swept off the devil’s chessboard.

One might end up asking: Who’s the devil?  And answering their own question.



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Tuesday, October 3, 2017

Watching 'far-right propaganda' or accessing jihadi websites could result in 15-year jail term - Tory Home Secretary

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Watching streamed extremist material online will be a criminal offence under plans to crackdown on terrorist propaganda. Home Secretary Amber Rudd will say those found guilty of repeatedly viewing terrorist material could face up to 15 years in jail. The new law will extend an existing ban on downloading and possessing the content on a PC to repeatedly watching it through sites like YouTube.



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Monday, October 2, 2017

Facebook Turns Over 3,000 Ads To Congress; Adam Schiff Vows To Release "Representative Sampling"

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As Democrats in Congress continue in their endless crusade to prove to you that Russia swayed the entire U.S. Presidential election with a measly $100,000 worth of Facebook ads, Adam Schiff (D-CA) has come forward this afternoon to let you know that he now has his hands on the 3,000 ads in question and plans to release a "representative sampling" of them in an effort to "inoculate the public against future Russian interference in our elections."

Once you've recovered from the laughing fit, here is his full statement:

"As part of their continuing cooperation with our Committee's investigation, Facebook has now turned over more than 3,000 ads it uncovered that were purchased by an organization connected to Russian intelligence services. These ads are significant to our investigation as they help demonstrate how Russia employed sophisticated measures to push disinformation and propaganda to millions of Americans online during the election, in order to sow discord and chaos, and divide us from one another."

 

"As we fully examine these ads in the coming days, we will be particularly interested in understanding their full reach, in particular to determine what groups and individuals were most heavily targeted and why. We will continue to work with Facebook and other tech companies to determine the full extent of Russia's use of online platforms, including paid advertising, since what we now know may only scratch the surface."

 

"The American people deserve to see the ways that the Russian intelligence services manipulated and took advantage of online platforms to stoke and amplify social and political tensions, which remains a tactic we see the Russian government rely on today."

 

"Later this month, when our committee hears directly from tech firms in an open hearing, it's my hope to make a representative sampling of these ads public at that time so we can inoculate the public against future Russian interference in our elections. But I am also committed to making all of these ads public as soon as possible, working closely with Facebook to address any privacy considerations."

NEW: Facebook turns over 3,000 Russia-linked ads to congressional investigators; Rep. Schiff hopes to make "representative sampling" public pic.twitter.com/Ug457w6fwN

— World News Tonight (@ABCWorldNews) October 2, 2017

Of course, as Schiff continues to ignore reality and advance his "Russian collusion" narrative at all costs, even the Washington Post, who got their hands on some leaked copies of the now infamous 3,000 Facebook ads last week, admitted that the ads they saw hardly fit the narrative that Democratic lawmakers have spun in recent weeks, claiming the ads didn’t advocate on behalf of a specific candidate, but rather hewed to political issues like abortion rights (see: Leaked Descriptions Of Infamous "Russia Ads" Derail Collusion Narrative "They Showed Support For Clinton"). 

Moreoever, WaPo reported that the ads represented issues on both sides of the ideological spectrum, which would suggest that the buyers didn’t intend to support a specific candidate, but rather their own unique agenda.

The batch of more than 3,000 Russian-bought ads that Facebook is preparing to turn over to Congress shows a deep understanding of social divides in American society, with some ads promoting African-American rights groups including Black Lives Matter and others suggesting that these same groups pose a rising political threat, say people familiar with the covert influence campaign.

 

The Russian campaign — taking advantage of Facebook’s ability to simultaneously send contrary messages to different groups of users based on their political and demographic characteristics - also sought to sow discord among religious groups. Other ads highlighted support for Democrat Hillary Clinton among Muslim women.

In conclusion, while we could go through the effort of "fact-checking" each of the inconsistencies in Schiff's statement above, we'll just leave you with this more high-level, graphical analysis of why his continued focus on this specific issue is so criminally stupid (please note, this is not a mistake...the $50k worth of "potentially political" ads purchased by "Russian-linked" accounts literally isn't even big enough to show up on the chart compared to how much Hillary spent on her campaign).

2017.09.12%20-%20FaceBook_0.jpg



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