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2020 US General Election Thread VIII: Cs, Ds, and Es

For discussion and debate about anything. (Not a roleplay related forum; out-of-character commentary only.)

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How Many Votes Do You Expect to be Early Votes Nationwide?

0-10%
22
7%
10-20%
51
17%
20-30%
85
28%
30-40%
66
21%
40-50%
45
15%
50%+
39
13%
 
Total votes : 308

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Valrifell
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Posts: 31063
Founded: Aug 18, 2013
Ex-Nation

Postby Valrifell » Wed Sep 09, 2020 6:29 pm

Blargoblarg wrote:
Washington Resistance Army wrote:
I don't see why he shouldn't get one tbh. It's not like there's any actual standards to it.

They gave one to Obama and he bombed a bunch of civilians in Middle Eastern countries. Seems like the Nobel Peace Prize is pretty meaningless at this point.


Again, just because no American worth their salt has won it doesn't mean the entire concept is garbage. It just means Americans in positions of power suck.
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Thermodolia
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Posts: 78484
Founded: Oct 07, 2011
Civil Rights Lovefest

Postby Thermodolia » Wed Sep 09, 2020 6:29 pm

Farnhamia wrote:
Thermodolia wrote:Because the rest of us aren’t taking anything for granted.

Hell a lot in the DNC are acting like Trump will win everything and then they go from there.

While no one at the DNC should take anything for granted after 2016, the last time Minnesota went to a Republican in the presidential election was 1972.

It went to Clinton by only 1.5%. If Minnesota was a Trump state we’d be talking about how close it was and that Biden could definitely flip it
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Blargoblarg
Minister
 
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Founded: Sep 06, 2010
Corrupt Dictatorship

Postby Blargoblarg » Wed Sep 09, 2020 6:34 pm

The New York Times slanders left-wing opposition to Biden as “Russian propaganda”
The American intelligence agencies are at it again, instigating anti-Russian propaganda in the US media with reckless and entirely unsubstantiated claims that Moscow is intervening in the 2020 presidential election. As in previous such campaigns, going back to the 2016 elections, the leading role in the McCarthyite chorus is played by the New York Times.

A front-page article in Wednesday’s print edition of the Times carries the headline, “Facebook and Twitter Warn of Russian Meddling.” The article which follows makes it clear that the source of these allegations is not the two social media giants, but rather the FBI, which was itself acting on behalf of the intelligence apparatus as a whole. The Times adds, “Two people familiar with the matter said the influence operation was first detected by American intelligence agencies, including the National Security Agency.”

The article is written in the heavy-handed style typical of these slightly revised handouts from the CIA: ominous assertion is piled upon ominous assertion, without any evidence or even attribution. Thus, “Some American officials are worried about a broad effort by Russian intelligence to use fringe websites, spread conspiracy theories and sow division in the United States.” And again, “Russian intelligence agencies have used allies and operatives to place articles, including disinformation, into various fringe websites.”

The nature of the “influence operation” is remarkably slight. It supposedly consists of a news site called Peacedata, which has published critical commentaries on US and world events from a standpoint to the left of the Democratic Party, including criticism of the Biden-Harris presidential ticket. The site went live in October 2019, reprinting articles first posted elsewhere, and only began publishing new English-language content in March 2020.

The site allegedly solicited written contributions and paid small sums for articles, hiring American freelancers who were themselves genuinely opposed to supporting Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination because of his long right-wing record. Peacedata even used a public job board for its hiring, certainly unusual tradecraft if the publication was a project of the Russian secret police.

According to the Times account, the Russians were “in the earliest stages of building an audience for the fake news site on Facebook. The group had created 13 fake accounts and two pages dedicated to promoting Peacedata, according to Facebook. The pages were followed by 14,000 people.”

This paragraph is worth considering since it entirely demolishes the suggestion that the US intelligence agencies, Facebook and its security consultant Graphika have uncovered a major threat to American democracy, one so significant that it must be highlighted on the front page of the New York Times.

According to a detailed report by Graphika, Peacedata published a total of 500 items in English in about nine months, of which 25 concerned the US elections. Pages promoting the site had a total of 14,000 followers. How could this represent a significant factor in a country where 150 million people are expected to cast ballots in 2020?

And what about the timing? It is only 60 days until the US presidential election. The first ballots for early and absentee voting are about to be mailed out. Yet the alleged Russian propaganda operation is only “in the earliest stages of building an audience.” Were the “Russians” not in possession of a calendar? Did they perhaps think the election had been postponed to 2021?

It should also be pointed out that while the Times howls about this supposed threat to the US presidential election, the US government routinely intervenes on a truly massive scale in elections all over the world, promoting candidates subservient to its interests, and using all the methods in the arsenal of the CIA and State Department to rig outcomes, overthrow governments and suppress—frequently with bloodshed—those who come into conflict with Washington.

The US intelligence agencies claim, without any public substantiation, that the Peacedata site was set up by the Internet Research Agency, an organization based in St. Petersburg, the former Leningrad, which was accused of playing a similar role in the 2016 US elections. However, the Peacedata site has denied any connection with Russia and called the Facebook claims “smears and baseless accusations.”

In any event, the fact of the matter is that the site is being denounced for publishing information that is true, and reflects the views held by large sections of the US population.

Four years ago, the claim was that the Internet Research Agency had encouraged pro-Trump and anti-Clinton sentiment through Facebook advertising, going so far as to organize a handful of anti-Clinton protests in the United States, attended by Americans unaware that they were being manipulated by Russia.

Even if one accepted the US intelligence agencies’ account—despite a complete absence of evidence—the suggestion that this operation had any significant impact on the election, let alone was responsible for Trump’s victory, was preposterous. The scale of this effort was tiny: by one estimate, the group spent a total of less than $100,000 on Facebook ads, a drop in the bucket in the $5 billion US election campaign.

While these claims of Russian interference in the US elections are preposterous on their face, there is a sinister and deeply reactionary side to the propaganda by the Times—echoed in the Washington Post, National Public Radio, the television networks, and the rest of the capitalist press.

The Times article is a desperate attempt to discredit and witch-hunt left-wing opposition to the Democratic Party. They are extremely fearful of any criticism from the left, under conditions where the Biden-Harris campaign is openly appealing for right-wing support, parading former Republican officials and operatives of the national-security state before the Democratic National Convention, and now seeking to compete with Trump in law-and-order denunciations of protests against police violence.

The Times article cited claims that in the material appearing on Peacedata, “topics ranged from racism in the United States to the environment and capitalism. Several articles argued that Mr. Biden would move the Democratic Party too far to the right.” By that standard, of course, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and half the other candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination would be found guilty as well, before they decided to endorse Biden and paint him in “progressive” colors.

Ominously, the article warns, “Researchers are also concerned about homegrown disinformation campaigns …” What, precisely, does that term comprise? Potentially, it is anyone in America who disagrees with the “facts” as presented by the military-intelligence apparatus and its mouthpieces like the New York Times.

The greatest absurdity is the suggestion that America would be a Garden of Eden if it were not for the Russian serpent. This is under conditions of mass protests in the streets against police killings, homicidal right-wing violence against demonstrators, a death toll from the coronavirus pandemic approaching 200,000, and nearly 30 million people thrown out of work—a massive and unprecedented social, political and economic crisis.

It was absurd to claim in 2016 that social discontent in the United States was the product of Russian “fake news.” Today, in the midst of the greatest social crisis in nearly a century, such claims are even more ludicrous.

The Times is making the age-old argument of every exhausted and reactionary ruling class: social protest is the product of “outside agitators.” And the logical conclusion is that these agitators must be silenced and suppressed.

In that context, it is highly significant that the report by Graphika, the security consultant for Facebook, makes several mentions of the World Socialist Web Site, pointing out that many of the articles published by Peacedata were actually reposted from the WSWS. Such reposting is hardly unusual, as the WSWS is a major source of news and commentary cited by publications all over the world.

The Times makes no mention of this fact, because that would violate the de facto ban on referring to the WSWS in the US corporate media. It would also undercut their attempt to label Peacedata a Russian puppet, since the WSWS, as the central organ of the world Trotskyist movement, the International Committee of the Fourth International, is the most consistent opponent of the right-wing capitalist government in Moscow, headed by the former Stalinist KGB agent Vladimir Putin.

It is no exaggeration to say that the arguments put forward by the Times and its media allies amount to the abrogation of the First Amendment. They are reviving the methods of McCarthyism, blaming Moscow for the social divisions that are exploding in the United States. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party, for which the Times serves as the main media voice, is engaged in a vicious assault on the democratic rights of its left-wing opponents, blocking ballot access for the Greens and the Socialist Equality Party.

For the Democratic Party, the fight against Trump is, as Obama said, an intramural scrimmage. The two factions have differences over foreign policy, which at times become heated. But they share a common class outlook. The watchword for the anti-communist bourgeois liberals, today as in the 1950s, is that the enemy is on the left.
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Borderlands of Rojava
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Posts: 14813
Founded: Jul 27, 2020
Ex-Nation

Postby Borderlands of Rojava » Wed Sep 09, 2020 6:38 pm

Blargoblarg wrote:The New York Times slanders left-wing opposition to Biden as “Russian propaganda”
The American intelligence agencies are at it again, instigating anti-Russian propaganda in the US media with reckless and entirely unsubstantiated claims that Moscow is intervening in the 2020 presidential election. As in previous such campaigns, going back to the 2016 elections, the leading role in the McCarthyite chorus is played by the New York Times.

A front-page article in Wednesday’s print edition of the Times carries the headline, “Facebook and Twitter Warn of Russian Meddling.” The article which follows makes it clear that the source of these allegations is not the two social media giants, but rather the FBI, which was itself acting on behalf of the intelligence apparatus as a whole. The Times adds, “Two people familiar with the matter said the influence operation was first detected by American intelligence agencies, including the National Security Agency.”

The article is written in the heavy-handed style typical of these slightly revised handouts from the CIA: ominous assertion is piled upon ominous assertion, without any evidence or even attribution. Thus, “Some American officials are worried about a broad effort by Russian intelligence to use fringe websites, spread conspiracy theories and sow division in the United States.” And again, “Russian intelligence agencies have used allies and operatives to place articles, including disinformation, into various fringe websites.”

The nature of the “influence operation” is remarkably slight. It supposedly consists of a news site called Peacedata, which has published critical commentaries on US and world events from a standpoint to the left of the Democratic Party, including criticism of the Biden-Harris presidential ticket. The site went live in October 2019, reprinting articles first posted elsewhere, and only began publishing new English-language content in March 2020.

The site allegedly solicited written contributions and paid small sums for articles, hiring American freelancers who were themselves genuinely opposed to supporting Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination because of his long right-wing record. Peacedata even used a public job board for its hiring, certainly unusual tradecraft if the publication was a project of the Russian secret police.

According to the Times account, the Russians were “in the earliest stages of building an audience for the fake news site on Facebook. The group had created 13 fake accounts and two pages dedicated to promoting Peacedata, according to Facebook. The pages were followed by 14,000 people.”

This paragraph is worth considering since it entirely demolishes the suggestion that the US intelligence agencies, Facebook and its security consultant Graphika have uncovered a major threat to American democracy, one so significant that it must be highlighted on the front page of the New York Times.

According to a detailed report by Graphika, Peacedata published a total of 500 items in English in about nine months, of which 25 concerned the US elections. Pages promoting the site had a total of 14,000 followers. How could this represent a significant factor in a country where 150 million people are expected to cast ballots in 2020?

And what about the timing? It is only 60 days until the US presidential election. The first ballots for early and absentee voting are about to be mailed out. Yet the alleged Russian propaganda operation is only “in the earliest stages of building an audience.” Were the “Russians” not in possession of a calendar? Did they perhaps think the election had been postponed to 2021?

It should also be pointed out that while the Times howls about this supposed threat to the US presidential election, the US government routinely intervenes on a truly massive scale in elections all over the world, promoting candidates subservient to its interests, and using all the methods in the arsenal of the CIA and State Department to rig outcomes, overthrow governments and suppress—frequently with bloodshed—those who come into conflict with Washington.

The US intelligence agencies claim, without any public substantiation, that the Peacedata site was set up by the Internet Research Agency, an organization based in St. Petersburg, the former Leningrad, which was accused of playing a similar role in the 2016 US elections. However, the Peacedata site has denied any connection with Russia and called the Facebook claims “smears and baseless accusations.”

In any event, the fact of the matter is that the site is being denounced for publishing information that is true, and reflects the views held by large sections of the US population.

Four years ago, the claim was that the Internet Research Agency had encouraged pro-Trump and anti-Clinton sentiment through Facebook advertising, going so far as to organize a handful of anti-Clinton protests in the United States, attended by Americans unaware that they were being manipulated by Russia.

Even if one accepted the US intelligence agencies’ account—despite a complete absence of evidence—the suggestion that this operation had any significant impact on the election, let alone was responsible for Trump’s victory, was preposterous. The scale of this effort was tiny: by one estimate, the group spent a total of less than $100,000 on Facebook ads, a drop in the bucket in the $5 billion US election campaign.

While these claims of Russian interference in the US elections are preposterous on their face, there is a sinister and deeply reactionary side to the propaganda by the Times—echoed in the Washington Post, National Public Radio, the television networks, and the rest of the capitalist press.

The Times article is a desperate attempt to discredit and witch-hunt left-wing opposition to the Democratic Party. They are extremely fearful of any criticism from the left, under conditions where the Biden-Harris campaign is openly appealing for right-wing support, parading former Republican officials and operatives of the national-security state before the Democratic National Convention, and now seeking to compete with Trump in law-and-order denunciations of protests against police violence.

The Times article cited claims that in the material appearing on Peacedata, “topics ranged from racism in the United States to the environment and capitalism. Several articles argued that Mr. Biden would move the Democratic Party too far to the right.” By that standard, of course, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and half the other candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination would be found guilty as well, before they decided to endorse Biden and paint him in “progressive” colors.

Ominously, the article warns, “Researchers are also concerned about homegrown disinformation campaigns …” What, precisely, does that term comprise? Potentially, it is anyone in America who disagrees with the “facts” as presented by the military-intelligence apparatus and its mouthpieces like the New York Times.

The greatest absurdity is the suggestion that America would be a Garden of Eden if it were not for the Russian serpent. This is under conditions of mass protests in the streets against police killings, homicidal right-wing violence against demonstrators, a death toll from the coronavirus pandemic approaching 200,000, and nearly 30 million people thrown out of work—a massive and unprecedented social, political and economic crisis.

It was absurd to claim in 2016 that social discontent in the United States was the product of Russian “fake news.” Today, in the midst of the greatest social crisis in nearly a century, such claims are even more ludicrous.

The Times is making the age-old argument of every exhausted and reactionary ruling class: social protest is the product of “outside agitators.” And the logical conclusion is that these agitators must be silenced and suppressed.

In that context, it is highly significant that the report by Graphika, the security consultant for Facebook, makes several mentions of the World Socialist Web Site, pointing out that many of the articles published by Peacedata were actually reposted from the WSWS. Such reposting is hardly unusual, as the WSWS is a major source of news and commentary cited by publications all over the world.

The Times makes no mention of this fact, because that would violate the de facto ban on referring to the WSWS in the US corporate media. It would also undercut their attempt to label Peacedata a Russian puppet, since the WSWS, as the central organ of the world Trotskyist movement, the International Committee of the Fourth International, is the most consistent opponent of the right-wing capitalist government in Moscow, headed by the former Stalinist KGB agent Vladimir Putin.

It is no exaggeration to say that the arguments put forward by the Times and its media allies amount to the abrogation of the First Amendment. They are reviving the methods of McCarthyism, blaming Moscow for the social divisions that are exploding in the United States. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party, for which the Times serves as the main media voice, is engaged in a vicious assault on the democratic rights of its left-wing opponents, blocking ballot access for the Greens and the Socialist Equality Party.

For the Democratic Party, the fight against Trump is, as Obama said, an intramural scrimmage. The two factions have differences over foreign policy, which at times become heated. But they share a common class outlook. The watchword for the anti-communist bourgeois liberals, today as in the 1950s, is that the enemy is on the left.


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Thermodolia
Post Kaiser
 
Posts: 78484
Founded: Oct 07, 2011
Civil Rights Lovefest

Postby Thermodolia » Wed Sep 09, 2020 6:40 pm

Valrifell wrote:
Blargoblarg wrote:They gave one to Obama and he bombed a bunch of civilians in Middle Eastern countries. Seems like the Nobel Peace Prize is pretty meaningless at this point.


Again, just because no American worth their salt has won it doesn't mean the entire concept is garbage. It just means Americans in positions of power suck.

Teddy, Charles G. Dawes, Frank B. Kellogg (not that one), Jane Addams, Cordell Hull, Emily Greene Balch, Ralph Bunche, Linus Pauling, MLK, Norman Borlaug, Jimmy Carter, and Jody Williams would all definitely disagree with the bolded.
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Kowani
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Posts: 44956
Founded: Apr 01, 2018
Democratic Socialists

Postby Kowani » Wed Sep 09, 2020 6:41 pm


...What did she do?
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Thermodolia
Post Kaiser
 
Posts: 78484
Founded: Oct 07, 2011
Civil Rights Lovefest

Postby Thermodolia » Wed Sep 09, 2020 6:43 pm

Kowani wrote:
Borderlands of Rojava wrote:
Thanks Hillary.

...What did she do?

Exist? Lose to Trump? Just being her? Horrible fashion sense?
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Valrifell
Post Czar
 
Posts: 31063
Founded: Aug 18, 2013
Ex-Nation

Postby Valrifell » Wed Sep 09, 2020 6:43 pm

Thermodolia wrote:
Valrifell wrote:
Again, just because no American worth their salt has won it doesn't mean the entire concept is garbage. It just means Americans in positions of power suck.

Teddy, Charles G. Dawes, Frank B. Kellogg (not that one), Jane Addams, Cordell Hull, Emily Greene Balch, Ralph Bunche, Linus Pauling, MLK, Norman Borlaug, Jimmy Carter, and Jody Williams would all definitely disagree with the bolded.


I've been had by someone who knows more about history than I do!

Nevertheless, the point is to argue against recency bias. That Obama and others had undeserving Nobel prizes does not in any way devalue the prize to other recipients. In the same way giving the Nobel prize in physics to a bunch of string theorists devalues that prize.
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Kowani
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Posts: 44956
Founded: Apr 01, 2018
Democratic Socialists

Postby Kowani » Wed Sep 09, 2020 6:44 pm

Thermodolia wrote:
Kowani wrote:...What did she do?

Exist? Lose to Trump? Just being her? Horrible fashion sense?

All of those are true, but I'm not sure how that relates to the NYT's constant screeching.
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Eukaryotic Cells
Ambassador
 
Posts: 1761
Founded: Aug 10, 2020
Ex-Nation

Postby Eukaryotic Cells » Wed Sep 09, 2020 6:45 pm

Blargoblarg wrote:The New York Times slanders left-wing opposition to Biden as “Russian propaganda”
The American intelligence agencies are at it again, instigating anti-Russian propaganda in the US media with reckless and entirely unsubstantiated claims that Moscow is intervening in the 2020 presidential election. As in previous such campaigns, going back to the 2016 elections, the leading role in the McCarthyite chorus is played by the New York Times.

A front-page article in Wednesday’s print edition of the Times carries the headline, “Facebook and Twitter Warn of Russian Meddling.” The article which follows makes it clear that the source of these allegations is not the two social media giants, but rather the FBI, which was itself acting on behalf of the intelligence apparatus as a whole. The Times adds, “Two people familiar with the matter said the influence operation was first detected by American intelligence agencies, including the National Security Agency.”

The article is written in the heavy-handed style typical of these slightly revised handouts from the CIA: ominous assertion is piled upon ominous assertion, without any evidence or even attribution. Thus, “Some American officials are worried about a broad effort by Russian intelligence to use fringe websites, spread conspiracy theories and sow division in the United States.” And again, “Russian intelligence agencies have used allies and operatives to place articles, including disinformation, into various fringe websites.”

The nature of the “influence operation” is remarkably slight. It supposedly consists of a news site called Peacedata, which has published critical commentaries on US and world events from a standpoint to the left of the Democratic Party, including criticism of the Biden-Harris presidential ticket. The site went live in October 2019, reprinting articles first posted elsewhere, and only began publishing new English-language content in March 2020.

The site allegedly solicited written contributions and paid small sums for articles, hiring American freelancers who were themselves genuinely opposed to supporting Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination because of his long right-wing record. Peacedata even used a public job board for its hiring, certainly unusual tradecraft if the publication was a project of the Russian secret police.

According to the Times account, the Russians were “in the earliest stages of building an audience for the fake news site on Facebook. The group had created 13 fake accounts and two pages dedicated to promoting Peacedata, according to Facebook. The pages were followed by 14,000 people.”

This paragraph is worth considering since it entirely demolishes the suggestion that the US intelligence agencies, Facebook and its security consultant Graphika have uncovered a major threat to American democracy, one so significant that it must be highlighted on the front page of the New York Times.

According to a detailed report by Graphika, Peacedata published a total of 500 items in English in about nine months, of which 25 concerned the US elections. Pages promoting the site had a total of 14,000 followers. How could this represent a significant factor in a country where 150 million people are expected to cast ballots in 2020?

And what about the timing? It is only 60 days until the US presidential election. The first ballots for early and absentee voting are about to be mailed out. Yet the alleged Russian propaganda operation is only “in the earliest stages of building an audience.” Were the “Russians” not in possession of a calendar? Did they perhaps think the election had been postponed to 2021?

It should also be pointed out that while the Times howls about this supposed threat to the US presidential election, the US government routinely intervenes on a truly massive scale in elections all over the world, promoting candidates subservient to its interests, and using all the methods in the arsenal of the CIA and State Department to rig outcomes, overthrow governments and suppress—frequently with bloodshed—those who come into conflict with Washington.

The US intelligence agencies claim, without any public substantiation, that the Peacedata site was set up by the Internet Research Agency, an organization based in St. Petersburg, the former Leningrad, which was accused of playing a similar role in the 2016 US elections. However, the Peacedata site has denied any connection with Russia and called the Facebook claims “smears and baseless accusations.”

In any event, the fact of the matter is that the site is being denounced for publishing information that is true, and reflects the views held by large sections of the US population.

Four years ago, the claim was that the Internet Research Agency had encouraged pro-Trump and anti-Clinton sentiment through Facebook advertising, going so far as to organize a handful of anti-Clinton protests in the United States, attended by Americans unaware that they were being manipulated by Russia.

Even if one accepted the US intelligence agencies’ account—despite a complete absence of evidence—the suggestion that this operation had any significant impact on the election, let alone was responsible for Trump’s victory, was preposterous. The scale of this effort was tiny: by one estimate, the group spent a total of less than $100,000 on Facebook ads, a drop in the bucket in the $5 billion US election campaign.

While these claims of Russian interference in the US elections are preposterous on their face, there is a sinister and deeply reactionary side to the propaganda by the Times—echoed in the Washington Post, National Public Radio, the television networks, and the rest of the capitalist press.

The Times article is a desperate attempt to discredit and witch-hunt left-wing opposition to the Democratic Party. They are extremely fearful of any criticism from the left, under conditions where the Biden-Harris campaign is openly appealing for right-wing support, parading former Republican officials and operatives of the national-security state before the Democratic National Convention, and now seeking to compete with Trump in law-and-order denunciations of protests against police violence.

The Times article cited claims that in the material appearing on Peacedata, “topics ranged from racism in the United States to the environment and capitalism. Several articles argued that Mr. Biden would move the Democratic Party too far to the right.” By that standard, of course, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and half the other candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination would be found guilty as well, before they decided to endorse Biden and paint him in “progressive” colors.

Ominously, the article warns, “Researchers are also concerned about homegrown disinformation campaigns …” What, precisely, does that term comprise? Potentially, it is anyone in America who disagrees with the “facts” as presented by the military-intelligence apparatus and its mouthpieces like the New York Times.

The greatest absurdity is the suggestion that America would be a Garden of Eden if it were not for the Russian serpent. This is under conditions of mass protests in the streets against police killings, homicidal right-wing violence against demonstrators, a death toll from the coronavirus pandemic approaching 200,000, and nearly 30 million people thrown out of work—a massive and unprecedented social, political and economic crisis.

It was absurd to claim in 2016 that social discontent in the United States was the product of Russian “fake news.” Today, in the midst of the greatest social crisis in nearly a century, such claims are even more ludicrous.

The Times is making the age-old argument of every exhausted and reactionary ruling class: social protest is the product of “outside agitators.” And the logical conclusion is that these agitators must be silenced and suppressed.

In that context, it is highly significant that the report by Graphika, the security consultant for Facebook, makes several mentions of the World Socialist Web Site, pointing out that many of the articles published by Peacedata were actually reposted from the WSWS. Such reposting is hardly unusual, as the WSWS is a major source of news and commentary cited by publications all over the world.

The Times makes no mention of this fact, because that would violate the de facto ban on referring to the WSWS in the US corporate media. It would also undercut their attempt to label Peacedata a Russian puppet, since the WSWS, as the central organ of the world Trotskyist movement, the International Committee of the Fourth International, is the most consistent opponent of the right-wing capitalist government in Moscow, headed by the former Stalinist KGB agent Vladimir Putin.

It is no exaggeration to say that the arguments put forward by the Times and its media allies amount to the abrogation of the First Amendment. They are reviving the methods of McCarthyism, blaming Moscow for the social divisions that are exploding in the United States. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party, for which the Times serves as the main media voice, is engaged in a vicious assault on the democratic rights of its left-wing opponents, blocking ballot access for the Greens and the Socialist Equality Party.

For the Democratic Party, the fight against Trump is, as Obama said, an intramural scrimmage. The two factions have differences over foreign policy, which at times become heated. But they share a common class outlook. The watchword for the anti-communist bourgeois liberals, today as in the 1950s, is that the enemy is on the left.

In 2016, the Russians amplified both Black Lives Matter and Trumpist groups to manipulate US internal politics. Of course, real Americans held many of these opinions as well. Adding fuel to the fire doesn't mean you're the one who started the fire.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... d=64548838

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Eukaryotic Cells
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Posts: 1761
Founded: Aug 10, 2020
Ex-Nation

Postby Eukaryotic Cells » Wed Sep 09, 2020 6:50 pm

San Lumen wrote:https://twitter.com/thauserkstp/status/1303817408361054209?s=20

Biden up nine in Minnesota. I’m at a loss as to why people think he is competitive here.

That is just one poll. Polling average on 538 is Biden +6.4. Average on RCP is Biden +5.

If Trump can tighten the race up by 3-4 points I think he has a shot there. His big problem is that there are a lot less undecided voters this time around.

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San Lumen
Post Kaiser
 
Posts: 87246
Founded: Jul 02, 2009
Liberal Democratic Socialists

Postby San Lumen » Wed Sep 09, 2020 6:59 pm

Diopolis wrote:
San Lumen wrote:https://twitter.com/thauserkstp/status/1303817408361054209?s=20

Biden up nine in Minnesota. I’m at a loss as to why people think he is competitive here.

We can probably expect Trump to outperform polls this time around, because 1) Trump supporters are more likely to vote in person, and the mail in ballot spoilage rate is much higher and 2) Trump runs a get out the vote effort, the dems don't. Not to mention the shy Trump voter(which was at the very least true last time, even if it's not all it's cracked up to be).

The polls are skewed is getting old and the shy Trump voter isn’t a thing.

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Cordel One
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Founded: Aug 06, 2020
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Postby Cordel One » Wed Sep 09, 2020 7:04 pm

Blargoblarg wrote:The New York Times slanders left-wing opposition to Biden as “Russian propaganda”
The American intelligence agencies are at it again, instigating anti-Russian propaganda in the US media with reckless and entirely unsubstantiated claims that Moscow is intervening in the 2020 presidential election. As in previous such campaigns, going back to the 2016 elections, the leading role in the McCarthyite chorus is played by the New York Times.

A front-page article in Wednesday’s print edition of the Times carries the headline, “Facebook and Twitter Warn of Russian Meddling.” The article which follows makes it clear that the source of these allegations is not the two social media giants, but rather the FBI, which was itself acting on behalf of the intelligence apparatus as a whole. The Times adds, “Two people familiar with the matter said the influence operation was first detected by American intelligence agencies, including the National Security Agency.”

The article is written in the heavy-handed style typical of these slightly revised handouts from the CIA: ominous assertion is piled upon ominous assertion, without any evidence or even attribution. Thus, “Some American officials are worried about a broad effort by Russian intelligence to use fringe websites, spread conspiracy theories and sow division in the United States.” And again, “Russian intelligence agencies have used allies and operatives to place articles, including disinformation, into various fringe websites.”

The nature of the “influence operation” is remarkably slight. It supposedly consists of a news site called Peacedata, which has published critical commentaries on US and world events from a standpoint to the left of the Democratic Party, including criticism of the Biden-Harris presidential ticket. The site went live in October 2019, reprinting articles first posted elsewhere, and only began publishing new English-language content in March 2020.

The site allegedly solicited written contributions and paid small sums for articles, hiring American freelancers who were themselves genuinely opposed to supporting Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination because of his long right-wing record. Peacedata even used a public job board for its hiring, certainly unusual tradecraft if the publication was a project of the Russian secret police.

According to the Times account, the Russians were “in the earliest stages of building an audience for the fake news site on Facebook. The group had created 13 fake accounts and two pages dedicated to promoting Peacedata, according to Facebook. The pages were followed by 14,000 people.”

This paragraph is worth considering since it entirely demolishes the suggestion that the US intelligence agencies, Facebook and its security consultant Graphika have uncovered a major threat to American democracy, one so significant that it must be highlighted on the front page of the New York Times.

According to a detailed report by Graphika, Peacedata published a total of 500 items in English in about nine months, of which 25 concerned the US elections. Pages promoting the site had a total of 14,000 followers. How could this represent a significant factor in a country where 150 million people are expected to cast ballots in 2020?

And what about the timing? It is only 60 days until the US presidential election. The first ballots for early and absentee voting are about to be mailed out. Yet the alleged Russian propaganda operation is only “in the earliest stages of building an audience.” Were the “Russians” not in possession of a calendar? Did they perhaps think the election had been postponed to 2021?

It should also be pointed out that while the Times howls about this supposed threat to the US presidential election, the US government routinely intervenes on a truly massive scale in elections all over the world, promoting candidates subservient to its interests, and using all the methods in the arsenal of the CIA and State Department to rig outcomes, overthrow governments and suppress—frequently with bloodshed—those who come into conflict with Washington.

The US intelligence agencies claim, without any public substantiation, that the Peacedata site was set up by the Internet Research Agency, an organization based in St. Petersburg, the former Leningrad, which was accused of playing a similar role in the 2016 US elections. However, the Peacedata site has denied any connection with Russia and called the Facebook claims “smears and baseless accusations.”

In any event, the fact of the matter is that the site is being denounced for publishing information that is true, and reflects the views held by large sections of the US population.

Four years ago, the claim was that the Internet Research Agency had encouraged pro-Trump and anti-Clinton sentiment through Facebook advertising, going so far as to organize a handful of anti-Clinton protests in the United States, attended by Americans unaware that they were being manipulated by Russia.

Even if one accepted the US intelligence agencies’ account—despite a complete absence of evidence—the suggestion that this operation had any significant impact on the election, let alone was responsible for Trump’s victory, was preposterous. The scale of this effort was tiny: by one estimate, the group spent a total of less than $100,000 on Facebook ads, a drop in the bucket in the $5 billion US election campaign.

While these claims of Russian interference in the US elections are preposterous on their face, there is a sinister and deeply reactionary side to the propaganda by the Times—echoed in the Washington Post, National Public Radio, the television networks, and the rest of the capitalist press.

The Times article is a desperate attempt to discredit and witch-hunt left-wing opposition to the Democratic Party. They are extremely fearful of any criticism from the left, under conditions where the Biden-Harris campaign is openly appealing for right-wing support, parading former Republican officials and operatives of the national-security state before the Democratic National Convention, and now seeking to compete with Trump in law-and-order denunciations of protests against police violence.

The Times article cited claims that in the material appearing on Peacedata, “topics ranged from racism in the United States to the environment and capitalism. Several articles argued that Mr. Biden would move the Democratic Party too far to the right.” By that standard, of course, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and half the other candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination would be found guilty as well, before they decided to endorse Biden and paint him in “progressive” colors.

Ominously, the article warns, “Researchers are also concerned about homegrown disinformation campaigns …” What, precisely, does that term comprise? Potentially, it is anyone in America who disagrees with the “facts” as presented by the military-intelligence apparatus and its mouthpieces like the New York Times.

The greatest absurdity is the suggestion that America would be a Garden of Eden if it were not for the Russian serpent. This is under conditions of mass protests in the streets against police killings, homicidal right-wing violence against demonstrators, a death toll from the coronavirus pandemic approaching 200,000, and nearly 30 million people thrown out of work—a massive and unprecedented social, political and economic crisis.

It was absurd to claim in 2016 that social discontent in the United States was the product of Russian “fake news.” Today, in the midst of the greatest social crisis in nearly a century, such claims are even more ludicrous.

The Times is making the age-old argument of every exhausted and reactionary ruling class: social protest is the product of “outside agitators.” And the logical conclusion is that these agitators must be silenced and suppressed.

In that context, it is highly significant that the report by Graphika, the security consultant for Facebook, makes several mentions of the World Socialist Web Site, pointing out that many of the articles published by Peacedata were actually reposted from the WSWS. Such reposting is hardly unusual, as the WSWS is a major source of news and commentary cited by publications all over the world.

The Times makes no mention of this fact, because that would violate the de facto ban on referring to the WSWS in the US corporate media. It would also undercut their attempt to label Peacedata a Russian puppet, since the WSWS, as the central organ of the world Trotskyist movement, the International Committee of the Fourth International, is the most consistent opponent of the right-wing capitalist government in Moscow, headed by the former Stalinist KGB agent Vladimir Putin.

It is no exaggeration to say that the arguments put forward by the Times and its media allies amount to the abrogation of the First Amendment. They are reviving the methods of McCarthyism, blaming Moscow for the social divisions that are exploding in the United States. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party, for which the Times serves as the main media voice, is engaged in a vicious assault on the democratic rights of its left-wing opponents, blocking ballot access for the Greens and the Socialist Equality Party.

For the Democratic Party, the fight against Trump is, as Obama said, an intramural scrimmage. The two factions have differences over foreign policy, which at times become heated. But they share a common class outlook. The watchword for the anti-communist bourgeois liberals, today as in the 1950s, is that the enemy is on the left.


Черт, они нас поймали.

Если серьезно, то российская дезинформация является серьезной проблемой, но навешивание ярлыка на всю левую оппозицию как на русских - это современный маккартизм.

Damn, they got us.

Seriously, Russian disinformation is a serious problem, but labeling the entire left opposition as Russians is modern McCarthyism.
Last edited by Cordel One on Wed Sep 09, 2020 7:10 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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Aureumterra
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Founded: Oct 25, 2017
Ex-Nation

Postby Aureumterra » Wed Sep 09, 2020 7:09 pm

Thermodolia wrote:
Valrifell wrote:
Again, just because no American worth their salt has won it doesn't mean the entire concept is garbage. It just means Americans in positions of power suck.

Teddy, Charles G. Dawes, Frank B. Kellogg (not that one), Jane Addams, Cordell Hull, Emily Greene Balch, Ralph Bunche, Linus Pauling, MLK, Norman Borlaug, Jimmy Carter, and Jody Williams would all definitely disagree with the bolded.

>Jimmy Carter

Bruh
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Cordel One
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Postby Cordel One » Wed Sep 09, 2020 7:11 pm

Thermodolia wrote:
Valrifell wrote:
Again, just because no American worth their salt has won it doesn't mean the entire concept is garbage. It just means Americans in positions of power suck.

Teddy, Charles G. Dawes, Frank B. Kellogg (not that one), Jane Addams, Cordell Hull, Emily Greene Balch, Ralph Bunche, Linus Pauling, MLK, Norman Borlaug, Jimmy Carter, and Jody Williams would all definitely disagree with the bolded.

The vast majority of those people are not worth their salt.

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Postby Kowani » Wed Sep 09, 2020 7:12 pm

Aureumterra wrote:
Thermodolia wrote:Teddy, Charles G. Dawes, Frank B. Kellogg (not that one), Jane Addams, Cordell Hull, Emily Greene Balch, Ralph Bunche, Linus Pauling, MLK, Norman Borlaug, Jimmy Carter, and Jody Williams would all definitely disagree with the bolded.

>Jimmy Carter

Bruh

Unless my memory serves me wrong, he got it for Facilitating the Camp David accords.
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Postby The Black Forrest » Wed Sep 09, 2020 7:14 pm

Blargoblarg wrote:The New York Times slanders left-wing opposition to Biden as “Russian propaganda”
The American intelligence agencies are at it again, instigating anti-Russian propaganda in the US media with reckless and entirely unsubstantiated claims that Moscow is intervening in the 2020 presidential election. As in previous such campaigns, going back to the 2016 elections, the leading role in the McCarthyite chorus is played by the New York Times.

A front-page article in Wednesday’s print edition of the Times carries the headline, “Facebook and Twitter Warn of Russian Meddling.” The article which follows makes it clear that the source of these allegations is not the two social media giants, but rather the FBI, which was itself acting on behalf of the intelligence apparatus as a whole. The Times adds, “Two people familiar with the matter said the influence operation was first detected by American intelligence agencies, including the National Security Agency.”

The article is written in the heavy-handed style typical of these slightly revised handouts from the CIA: ominous assertion is piled upon ominous assertion, without any evidence or even attribution. Thus, “Some American officials are worried about a broad effort by Russian intelligence to use fringe websites, spread conspiracy theories and sow division in the United States.” And again, “Russian intelligence agencies have used allies and operatives to place articles, including disinformation, into various fringe websites.”

The nature of the “influence operation” is remarkably slight. It supposedly consists of a news site called Peacedata, which has published critical commentaries on US and world events from a standpoint to the left of the Democratic Party, including criticism of the Biden-Harris presidential ticket. The site went live in October 2019, reprinting articles first posted elsewhere, and only began publishing new English-language content in March 2020.

The site allegedly solicited written contributions and paid small sums for articles, hiring American freelancers who were themselves genuinely opposed to supporting Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination because of his long right-wing record. Peacedata even used a public job board for its hiring, certainly unusual tradecraft if the publication was a project of the Russian secret police.

According to the Times account, the Russians were “in the earliest stages of building an audience for the fake news site on Facebook. The group had created 13 fake accounts and two pages dedicated to promoting Peacedata, according to Facebook. The pages were followed by 14,000 people.”

This paragraph is worth considering since it entirely demolishes the suggestion that the US intelligence agencies, Facebook and its security consultant Graphika have uncovered a major threat to American democracy, one so significant that it must be highlighted on the front page of the New York Times.

According to a detailed report by Graphika, Peacedata published a total of 500 items in English in about nine months, of which 25 concerned the US elections. Pages promoting the site had a total of 14,000 followers. How could this represent a significant factor in a country where 150 million people are expected to cast ballots in 2020?

And what about the timing? It is only 60 days until the US presidential election. The first ballots for early and absentee voting are about to be mailed out. Yet the alleged Russian propaganda operation is only “in the earliest stages of building an audience.” Were the “Russians” not in possession of a calendar? Did they perhaps think the election had been postponed to 2021?

It should also be pointed out that while the Times howls about this supposed threat to the US presidential election, the US government routinely intervenes on a truly massive scale in elections all over the world, promoting candidates subservient to its interests, and using all the methods in the arsenal of the CIA and State Department to rig outcomes, overthrow governments and suppress—frequently with bloodshed—those who come into conflict with Washington.

The US intelligence agencies claim, without any public substantiation, that the Peacedata site was set up by the Internet Research Agency, an organization based in St. Petersburg, the former Leningrad, which was accused of playing a similar role in the 2016 US elections. However, the Peacedata site has denied any connection with Russia and called the Facebook claims “smears and baseless accusations.”

In any event, the fact of the matter is that the site is being denounced for publishing information that is true, and reflects the views held by large sections of the US population.

Four years ago, the claim was that the Internet Research Agency had encouraged pro-Trump and anti-Clinton sentiment through Facebook advertising, going so far as to organize a handful of anti-Clinton protests in the United States, attended by Americans unaware that they were being manipulated by Russia.

Even if one accepted the US intelligence agencies’ account—despite a complete absence of evidence—the suggestion that this operation had any significant impact on the election, let alone was responsible for Trump’s victory, was preposterous. The scale of this effort was tiny: by one estimate, the group spent a total of less than $100,000 on Facebook ads, a drop in the bucket in the $5 billion US election campaign.

While these claims of Russian interference in the US elections are preposterous on their face, there is a sinister and deeply reactionary side to the propaganda by the Times—echoed in the Washington Post, National Public Radio, the television networks, and the rest of the capitalist press.

The Times article is a desperate attempt to discredit and witch-hunt left-wing opposition to the Democratic Party. They are extremely fearful of any criticism from the left, under conditions where the Biden-Harris campaign is openly appealing for right-wing support, parading former Republican officials and operatives of the national-security state before the Democratic National Convention, and now seeking to compete with Trump in law-and-order denunciations of protests against police violence.

The Times article cited claims that in the material appearing on Peacedata, “topics ranged from racism in the United States to the environment and capitalism. Several articles argued that Mr. Biden would move the Democratic Party too far to the right.” By that standard, of course, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and half the other candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination would be found guilty as well, before they decided to endorse Biden and paint him in “progressive” colors.

Ominously, the article warns, “Researchers are also concerned about homegrown disinformation campaigns …” What, precisely, does that term comprise? Potentially, it is anyone in America who disagrees with the “facts” as presented by the military-intelligence apparatus and its mouthpieces like the New York Times.

The greatest absurdity is the suggestion that America would be a Garden of Eden if it were not for the Russian serpent. This is under conditions of mass protests in the streets against police killings, homicidal right-wing violence against demonstrators, a death toll from the coronavirus pandemic approaching 200,000, and nearly 30 million people thrown out of work—a massive and unprecedented social, political and economic crisis.

It was absurd to claim in 2016 that social discontent in the United States was the product of Russian “fake news.” Today, in the midst of the greatest social crisis in nearly a century, such claims are even more ludicrous.

The Times is making the age-old argument of every exhausted and reactionary ruling class: social protest is the product of “outside agitators.” And the logical conclusion is that these agitators must be silenced and suppressed.

In that context, it is highly significant that the report by Graphika, the security consultant for Facebook, makes several mentions of the World Socialist Web Site, pointing out that many of the articles published by Peacedata were actually reposted from the WSWS. Such reposting is hardly unusual, as the WSWS is a major source of news and commentary cited by publications all over the world.

The Times makes no mention of this fact, because that would violate the de facto ban on referring to the WSWS in the US corporate media. It would also undercut their attempt to label Peacedata a Russian puppet, since the WSWS, as the central organ of the world Trotskyist movement, the International Committee of the Fourth International, is the most consistent opponent of the right-wing capitalist government in Moscow, headed by the former Stalinist KGB agent Vladimir Putin.

It is no exaggeration to say that the arguments put forward by the Times and its media allies amount to the abrogation of the First Amendment. They are reviving the methods of McCarthyism, blaming Moscow for the social divisions that are exploding in the United States. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party, for which the Times serves as the main media voice, is engaged in a vicious assault on the democratic rights of its left-wing opponents, blocking ballot access for the Greens and the Socialist Equality Party.

For the Democratic Party, the fight against Trump is, as Obama said, an intramural scrimmage. The two factions have differences over foreign policy, which at times become heated. But they share a common class outlook. The watchword for the anti-communist bourgeois liberals, today as in the 1950s, is that the enemy is on the left.


Hmmm? I would need to see the mentioned articles.
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Kexholm and Karelia
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Postby Kexholm and Karelia » Wed Sep 09, 2020 7:14 pm

Kowani wrote:
Aureumterra wrote:>Jimmy Carter

Bruh

Unless my memory serves me wrong, he got it for Facilitating the Camp David accords.

By that logic, Trump should get the Nobel prize for facilitating the Israel-UAE deal, but he probably won’t because he’s a Republican
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Postby Nobel Hobos 2 » Wed Sep 09, 2020 7:16 pm

Blargoblarg wrote:The New York Times slanders left-wing opposition to Biden as “Russian propaganda”
The American intelligence agencies are at it again, instigating anti-Russian propaganda in the US media with reckless and entirely unsubstantiated claims that Moscow is intervening in the 2020 presidential election. As in previous such campaigns, going back to the 2016 elections, the leading role in the McCarthyite chorus is played by the New York Times.

A front-page article in Wednesday’s print edition of the Times carries the headline, “Facebook and Twitter Warn of Russian Meddling.” The article which follows makes it clear that the source of these allegations is not the two social media giants, but rather the FBI, which was itself acting on behalf of the intelligence apparatus as a whole. The Times adds, “Two people familiar with the matter said the influence operation was first detected by American intelligence agencies, including the National Security Agency.”

The article is written in the heavy-handed style typical of these slightly revised handouts from the CIA: ominous assertion is piled upon ominous assertion, without any evidence or even attribution. Thus, “Some American officials are worried about a broad effort by Russian intelligence to use fringe websites, spread conspiracy theories and sow division in the United States.” And again, “Russian intelligence agencies have used allies and operatives to place articles, including disinformation, into various fringe websites.”

The nature of the “influence operation” is remarkably slight. It supposedly consists of a news site called Peacedata, which has published critical commentaries on US and world events from a standpoint to the left of the Democratic Party, including criticism of the Biden-Harris presidential ticket. The site went live in October 2019, reprinting articles first posted elsewhere, and only began publishing new English-language content in March 2020.

The site allegedly solicited written contributions and paid small sums for articles, hiring American freelancers who were themselves genuinely opposed to supporting Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination because of his long right-wing record. Peacedata even used a public job board for its hiring, certainly unusual tradecraft if the publication was a project of the Russian secret police.

According to the Times account, the Russians were “in the earliest stages of building an audience for the fake news site on Facebook. The group had created 13 fake accounts and two pages dedicated to promoting Peacedata, according to Facebook. The pages were followed by 14,000 people.”

This paragraph is worth considering since it entirely demolishes the suggestion that the US intelligence agencies, Facebook and its security consultant Graphika have uncovered a major threat to American democracy, one so significant that it must be highlighted on the front page of the New York Times.

According to a detailed report by Graphika, Peacedata published a total of 500 items in English in about nine months, of which 25 concerned the US elections. Pages promoting the site had a total of 14,000 followers. How could this represent a significant factor in a country where 150 million people are expected to cast ballots in 2020?

And what about the timing? It is only 60 days until the US presidential election. The first ballots for early and absentee voting are about to be mailed out. Yet the alleged Russian propaganda operation is only “in the earliest stages of building an audience.” Were the “Russians” not in possession of a calendar? Did they perhaps think the election had been postponed to 2021?

It should also be pointed out that while the Times howls about this supposed threat to the US presidential election, the US government routinely intervenes on a truly massive scale in elections all over the world, promoting candidates subservient to its interests, and using all the methods in the arsenal of the CIA and State Department to rig outcomes, overthrow governments and suppress—frequently with bloodshed—those who come into conflict with Washington.

The US intelligence agencies claim, without any public substantiation, that the Peacedata site was set up by the Internet Research Agency, an organization based in St. Petersburg, the former Leningrad, which was accused of playing a similar role in the 2016 US elections. However, the Peacedata site has denied any connection with Russia and called the Facebook claims “smears and baseless accusations.”

In any event, the fact of the matter is that the site is being denounced for publishing information that is true, and reflects the views held by large sections of the US population.

Four years ago, the claim was that the Internet Research Agency had encouraged pro-Trump and anti-Clinton sentiment through Facebook advertising, going so far as to organize a handful of anti-Clinton protests in the United States, attended by Americans unaware that they were being manipulated by Russia.

Even if one accepted the US intelligence agencies’ account—despite a complete absence of evidence—the suggestion that this operation had any significant impact on the election, let alone was responsible for Trump’s victory, was preposterous. The scale of this effort was tiny: by one estimate, the group spent a total of less than $100,000 on Facebook ads, a drop in the bucket in the $5 billion US election campaign.

While these claims of Russian interference in the US elections are preposterous on their face, there is a sinister and deeply reactionary side to the propaganda by the Times—echoed in the Washington Post, National Public Radio, the television networks, and the rest of the capitalist press.

The Times article is a desperate attempt to discredit and witch-hunt left-wing opposition to the Democratic Party. They are extremely fearful of any criticism from the left, under conditions where the Biden-Harris campaign is openly appealing for right-wing support, parading former Republican officials and operatives of the national-security state before the Democratic National Convention, and now seeking to compete with Trump in law-and-order denunciations of protests against police violence.

The Times article cited claims that in the material appearing on Peacedata, “topics ranged from racism in the United States to the environment and capitalism. Several articles argued that Mr. Biden would move the Democratic Party too far to the right.” By that standard, of course, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and half the other candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination would be found guilty as well, before they decided to endorse Biden and paint him in “progressive” colors.

Ominously, the article warns, “Researchers are also concerned about homegrown disinformation campaigns …” What, precisely, does that term comprise? Potentially, it is anyone in America who disagrees with the “facts” as presented by the military-intelligence apparatus and its mouthpieces like the New York Times.

The greatest absurdity is the suggestion that America would be a Garden of Eden if it were not for the Russian serpent. This is under conditions of mass protests in the streets against police killings, homicidal right-wing violence against demonstrators, a death toll from the coronavirus pandemic approaching 200,000, and nearly 30 million people thrown out of work—a massive and unprecedented social, political and economic crisis.

It was absurd to claim in 2016 that social discontent in the United States was the product of Russian “fake news.” Today, in the midst of the greatest social crisis in nearly a century, such claims are even more ludicrous.

The Times is making the age-old argument of every exhausted and reactionary ruling class: social protest is the product of “outside agitators.” And the logical conclusion is that these agitators must be silenced and suppressed.

In that context, it is highly significant that the report by Graphika, the security consultant for Facebook, makes several mentions of the World Socialist Web Site, pointing out that many of the articles published by Peacedata were actually reposted from the WSWS. Such reposting is hardly unusual, as the WSWS is a major source of news and commentary cited by publications all over the world.

The Times makes no mention of this fact, because that would violate the de facto ban on referring to the WSWS in the US corporate media. It would also undercut their attempt to label Peacedata a Russian puppet, since the WSWS, as the central organ of the world Trotskyist movement, the International Committee of the Fourth International, is the most consistent opponent of the right-wing capitalist government in Moscow, headed by the former Stalinist KGB agent Vladimir Putin.

It is no exaggeration to say that the arguments put forward by the Times and its media allies amount to the abrogation of the First Amendment. They are reviving the methods of McCarthyism, blaming Moscow for the social divisions that are exploding in the United States. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party, for which the Times serves as the main media voice, is engaged in a vicious assault on the democratic rights of its left-wing opponents, blocking ballot access for the Greens and the Socialist Equality Party.

For the Democratic Party, the fight against Trump is, as Obama said, an intramural scrimmage. The two factions have differences over foreign policy, which at times become heated. But they share a common class outlook. The watchword for the anti-communist bourgeois liberals, today as in the 1950s, is that the enemy is on the left.


"anti-communist bourgeois liberal" here. There's a reason the WSWS doesn't get mentioned in mainstream media, and whiny rants like that aren't going to change it.
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The Black Forrest
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Postby The Black Forrest » Wed Sep 09, 2020 7:19 pm

Kowani wrote:
Aureumterra wrote:>Jimmy Carter

Bruh

Unless my memory serves me wrong, he got it for Facilitating the Camp David accords.


He missed out due to a filing deadline. That happened earlier.

He got it for that, the Carter Center which works on human rights and human suffering, the work for Habitat for Humanity, and many other causes to fight poverty and hunger.
*I am a master proofreader after I click Submit.
* There is actually a War on Christmas. But Christmas started it, with it's unparalleled aggression against the Thanksgiving Holiday, and now Christmas has seized much Lebensraum in November, and are pushing into October. The rest of us seek to repel these invaders, and push them back to the status quo ante bellum Black Friday border. -Trotskylvania
* Silence Is Golden But Duct Tape Is Silver.
* I felt like Ayn Rand cornered me at a party, and three minutes in I found my first objection to what she was saying, but she kept talking without interruption for ten more days. - Max Barry talking about Atlas Shrugged

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Kowani
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Democratic Socialists

Postby Kowani » Wed Sep 09, 2020 7:21 pm

Kexholm and Karelia wrote:
Kowani wrote:Unless my memory serves me wrong, he got it for Facilitating the Camp David accords.

By that logic, Trump should get the Nobel prize for facilitating the Israel-UAE deal, but he probably won’t because he’s a Republican

He's been nominated for that.

The Black Forrest wrote:
Kowani wrote:Unless my memory serves me wrong, he got it for Facilitating the Camp David accords.


He missed out due to a filing deadline. That happened earlier.

He got it for that, the Carter Center which works on human rights and human suffering, the work for Habitat for Humanity, and many other causes to fight poverty and hunger.

Ahhh.
Yeah, that might be a better one.
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Kexholm and Karelia
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Founded: Jun 21, 2020
Ex-Nation

Postby Kexholm and Karelia » Wed Sep 09, 2020 7:21 pm

Major-Tom wrote:
Kexholm and Karelia wrote:Trump supporters have been demonized as all being racists, but in reality, barely anyone is racist. I have been to many Trump rallies, no one cared that I was Chinese, in fact, people praised me for resisting the CCP, and wished me luck on "liberating my ancestral land."

When I pass through rural America while going places, people are very friendly and are more curious than anything, when I tell them I’m a Trump supporter, they go as far as inviting me over for dinner. The only experience with racism I have had in the US has been in urban Philadelphia, where two black men called me a "Fucking chinky pig," while I was crossing the street and their car had to stop.
(and before you leftists jump on the opportunity to paint me as a black-hating racist, I know these people are not representative of the vast majority of black people)

Portraying all or even most Trump supporters as racist is another one of the left’s most effective tactic, lying.


I disagree that all Trump supporters are racist, but I'm gonna have to say you're full of it at several of your quotes, from "liberating my ancestral land" to "Fucking chinky pig." I'm sorry mate, but all of that sounds completely made up. But maybe it's not, I'm not you. While not all Trump supporters are racist, just ask yourselves, who do the racists by and large support?

If you’re imagining a rural "hick," than that’s not the case, the guy who said the "Liberating" quote was a college student, PoliSci major, and a Trump Supporter.

I guess the guys in the second incident had road rage because I was crossing the street and they had to suddenly stop, but it happened
Right wing conservative
Trump supporter
Anti socialist, communist, and all other leftists
orange man bad. diversity is our strength. real communism hasn’t been tried yet. the hong kong protestors are paid by the cia. antifa protestors are good, hong kong protestors are american bootlickers. China is a better alternative to America. uyghur genocide isn’t real, and it is western propaganda. Trump should not have killed Soleimani. gender is a social construct invented by white supremacists.

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Nobel Hobos 2
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Postby Nobel Hobos 2 » Wed Sep 09, 2020 7:22 pm

Kexholm and Karelia wrote:
Kowani wrote:Unless my memory serves me wrong, he got it for Facilitating the Camp David accords.

By that logic, Trump should get the Nobel prize for facilitating the Israel-UAE deal, but he probably won’t because he’s a Republican


Maybe Trump could found a Trump Prize with all his money. Well he wouldn't have to give up his money yet of course. His family would get a nasty surprise when he dies is all.

A century from now the controversy over some war criminal getting the Trump Prize for Diplomacy would remind people of who Donald Trump was.
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High rate of Nobel prizes and other academic achievements.

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Kexholm and Karelia
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Postby Kexholm and Karelia » Wed Sep 09, 2020 7:23 pm

US-SSR wrote:
Kexholm and Karelia wrote:Trump supporters have been demonized as all being racists, but in reality, barely anyone is racist. I have been to many Trump rallies, no one cared that I was Chinese, in fact, people praised me for resisting the CCP, and wished me luck on "liberating my ancestral land."

When I pass through rural America while going places, people are very friendly and are more curious than anything, when I tell them I’m a Trump supporter, they go as far as inviting me over for dinner. The only experience with racism I have had in the US has been in urban Philadelphia, where two black men called me a "Fucking chinky pig," while I was crossing the street and their car had to stop.
(and before you leftists jump on the opportunity to paint me as a black-hating racist, I know these people are not representative of the vast majority of black people)

Portraying all or even most Trump supporters as racist is another one of the left’s most effective tactic, lying.


Except a recent study showed that the best predicter of support for Trump and acceptance of anti-small-d-democratic values was ethnocentric attitudes.

Your "study" defines "cultural conservatism" so broadly that literally anything can be molded to fit the definition
Right wing conservative
Trump supporter
Anti socialist, communist, and all other leftists
orange man bad. diversity is our strength. real communism hasn’t been tried yet. the hong kong protestors are paid by the cia. antifa protestors are good, hong kong protestors are american bootlickers. China is a better alternative to America. uyghur genocide isn’t real, and it is western propaganda. Trump should not have killed Soleimani. gender is a social construct invented by white supremacists.

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Postby The Black Forrest » Wed Sep 09, 2020 7:25 pm

Kexholm and Karelia wrote:
Major-Tom wrote:
I disagree that all Trump supporters are racist, but I'm gonna have to say you're full of it at several of your quotes, from "liberating my ancestral land" to "Fucking chinky pig." I'm sorry mate, but all of that sounds completely made up. But maybe it's not, I'm not you. While not all Trump supporters are racist, just ask yourselves, who do the racists by and large support?

If you’re imagining a rural "hick," than that’s not the case, the guy who said the "Liberating" quote was a college student, PoliSci major, and a Trump Supporter.

I guess the guys in the second incident had road rage because I was crossing the street and they had to suddenly stop, but it happened


Rural hicks can go to school. My cousins fit that bill. They also support trump and make rather racist comments.

To suggest all are racists; it’s right to say that’s not possible.

To suggest it’s no big deal is not right as well.
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