Former President Donald J. Trump

[sloopjohnc]

Ooh, Facebook found Russia-bought ads proving they meddled with America's democracy.

Obama tried to give Zuckerberg a wake-up call over fake news on Facebook

Facebook announced on Sept. 21 that it would turn over copies of 3,000 political ads brought by Russian accounts during the 2016 election, after previously showing some to congressional investigators. (The Washington Post)

By Adam Entous, Elizabeth Dwoskin and Craig Timberg September 24 https://www.washingtonpost.com/business ... 7e2223a915

Another load of fake news from the Hillary loving sore losers at the Washington Post. Watch how Robert Parry again dissects these vermin and exposes the rot at the top to sunlight.

So, Facebook initially – after extensive searching – did not find evidence of a Russian operation. Then, after continued pressure from high-level Democrats, Facebook continued to scour its system and again found nothing, or as the Post article acknowledged, Facebook “had searched extensively for evidence of foreign purchases of political advertising but had come up short.”

https://consortiumnews.com/2017/09/25/w ... a-bashing/

I challenge any of you to give me an example of Russia-generated fake news. Go to RT and Sputnik if you must and bring Jimbo some fake news.

The Russian ad buy has been established as factual, it seems.

But FaceBook it says it can't find the ads?

Case closed then, I guess. *eye roll*

Twitter too with Russian accounts. It's funny how they can sell very specific customer data, but when the government comes a calling, suddenly they can't find anything.

[Jimbo]

The Russian ad buy has been established as factual, it seems.

But FaceBook it says it can't find the ads?

Case closed then, I guess. *eye roll*

Twitter too with Russian accounts. It's funny how they can sell very specific customer data, but when the government comes a calling, suddenly they can't find anything.[/quote]


Because there are no ads, nothing that shows that someone in the Kremlin tried to meddle in the election via Twitter or FB. It's just another bullshit lie, more fake news, another throw at the wall to see what sticks bumbling attempt to smear-Russia-smear Trump from our stellar non-partisan media.

[Jimbo]

The Russian ad buy has been established as factual, it seems.

But FaceBook it says it can't find the ads?

Case closed then, I guess. *eye roll*

Twitter too with Russian accounts. It's funny how they can sell very specific customer data, but when the government comes a calling, suddenly they can't find anything.

Because there are no ads, nothing that shows that someone in the Kremlin tried to meddle in the election via Twitter or FB. It's just another bullshit lie, more fake news, another throw at the wall to see what sticks bumbling attempt to smear-Russia-smear Trump from our stellar non-partisan media.

[Count Machuki]

The Puerto Rico response is pure racism
There. I said it

[Snarfyguy]

The Russian ad buy has been established as factual, it seems.

But FaceBook it says it can't find the ads?

Case closed then, I guess. *eye roll*

Twitter too with Russian accounts. It's funny how they can sell very specific customer data, but when the government comes a calling, suddenly they can't find anything.

Because there are no ads, nothing that shows that someone in the Kremlin tried to meddle in the election via Twitter or FB. It's just another bullshit lie, more fake news, another throw at the wall to see what sticks bumbling attempt to smear-Russia-smear Trump from our stellar non-partisan media.

But 20 seconds on Google shows that FaceBook has agreed to turn over 3,000 of these ads to Congress, and has already done so for Mueller's investigation.

In early September, Facebook said it had identified $150,000 of political ads purchased by fake accounts linked to Russia. It attributed about $100,000 of the total, or 3,000 ads, to 470 accounts related to a Russian propaganda group called Internet Research Agency. It found another 2,000 ads worth $50,000 by searching for ads purchased through US internet addresses whose accounts were set to the Russian language.

https://www.wired.com/story/what-we-kno ... nd-russia/

So again, these facts are not in contention (at least by anyone participating in consensus reality). If you're just going to maintain this is "fake news" then there's no point engaging with you.

Enjoy the festival!

[Jimbo]

Because there are no ads, nothing that shows that someone in the Kremlin tried to meddle in the election via Twitter or FB. It's just another bullshit lie, more fake news, another throw at the wall to see what sticks bumbling attempt to smear-Russia-smear Trump from our stellar non-partisan media.

But 20 seconds on Google shows that FaceBook has agreed to turn over 3,000 of these ads to Congress, and has already done so for Mueller's investigation.

In early September, Facebook said it had identified $150,000 of political ads purchased by fake accounts linked to Russia. It attributed about $100,000 of the total, or 3,000 ads, to 470 accounts related to a Russian propaganda group called Internet Research Agency. It found another 2,000 ads worth $50,000 by searching for ads purchased through US internet addresses whose accounts were set to the Russian language.

https://www.wired.com/story/what-we-kno ... nd-russia/

So again, these facts are not in contention (at least by anyone participating in consensus reality). If you're just going to maintain this is "fake news" then there's no point engaging with you.

The Wired site won't let me in.

I asked you to argue the CN story, not me. Did you read the Parry piece I posted? If you had you would see what bullshit, what a nothingburger the FB Twitter-Russia story is. You would see what a pittance a $150,000 ad buy is to FB. Maybe the Wired story has it but I'd like to see one of the ads. Maybe you can paste it here. Besides, with CIA contracts being so lucrative, FB will do backflips to please the US government and so they went nuts trying to find something, anything which could might maybe possibly have a link to Russia, or somewhere near Russia, like Europe.

If you don't see that this story is just another link, another diversion in the neocon game then you are not a Russian stooge, you are an American stooge.

[Count Machuki]

The Puerto Rico response is pure racism
There. I said it

A day later I see this

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2017/09/30/poli ... index.html

[Your Friendly Neighbourhood Postman]

The Puerto Rico response is pure racism
There. I said it

A day later I see this

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2017/09/30/poli ... index.html

https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/09/29 ... erto-rico/

https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/09/29 ... erto-rico/

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-polit ... uerto-rico

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/09/3 ... ane-243329

[Count Machuki]

An island full of white people would have been looked after.

[Your Friendly Neighbourhood Postman]

An island full of white people would have been looked after.

Yes. It is extremely sad. I guess we've used up all words by now that can possibly describe what's going on here.

[Snarfyguy]

Aside from all the repugnant hypocrisy coming out of his lie-hole, can his claim that there are 10,000 federal workers on the island possibly be true? Where do they put that many workers?

Is the gov't doing everything it can, keeping in mind the logistical obstacles? Are they air-dropping supplies and that sort of thing?

[Snarfyguy]

The CN link, which I support, above is what you need to debate.

Even Parry doesn't dispute that the ads exist. What I'm getting out of that article (it's REALLY LONG) is that he considers the WaPo and the NYT to be purveyors of sloppy, biased reporting. I'm not going to argue that; I have nothing invested in those papers.

But this is a rabbit hole I'm not going down. What to make of his charge that

[T]here is nothing in the Post’s article acknowledging that nothing from the various Democratic email disclosures, which have been blamed on Russia (again without real evidence), has been identified as untrue. So, how can truthful information, whether you like how it was obtained or not, be “fake news” or “disinformation”?

Well, that's not what article's about, so in what way is such an acknowledgement lacking?

Anyway, Zuckerberg himself now publicly regrets shrugging off the ad-influence notion, conceding there's a valid issue there. But this is small potatoes when the heads and former heads of all our intelligence agencies maintain that Russia interfered in the election through a variety of means.

Trump maintains this is a "hoax," but ask yourself a question: how would he be in a position to know that, contra the collective wisdom of all the intelligence heads (who work for him, let's not forget)? How could he possibly know with certainty that, say, an agent of Manafort's didn't buy these ads, or otherwise have some dirty connection to any Russian players? How is it plausible that he *knows* that every conceivable connection among his gang and Russia is just a smear? Answer: he cannot possibly know that to be true, ergo he's lying.

I think this is the kind of stuff we need to keep an eye on instead of demanding to be shown the evidence while the investigation is proceeding.

Show me one [of the ads].

If/when Mueller brings charges, he'll be bound to have evidence, so I don't know why you're asking me for it. I'm not even on FaceBook.

I trust this settles the matter.

[Count Machuki]

I'm not even on FaceBook.

More the pity

[Jimbo]

What I'm getting out of that article (it's REALLY LONG) is that he considers the WaPo and the NYT to be purveyors of sloppy, biased reporting. I'm not going to argue that; I have nothing invested in those papers.

This, however, is Parry's point. He doesn't favor Trump or even Putin, for that matter. He favors accuracy in journalism and if the NYT and WAPO, America's most influential papers, are "purveyors of sloppy, biased reporting" then he is calling them out. Their opinions can lead the US into war al a the "sloppy, biased reporting" about aluminum tubes and the Iraq war.

[toomanyhatz]

"purveyor[s] of sloppy, biased reporting"

Pretty much describes Parry perfectly.

[Jimbo]

"purveyor[s] of sloppy, biased reporting"

Pretty much describes Parry perfectly.

One example if you please.

[toomanyhatz]

I've given you tons of examples in the past, but since he promotes the narrative you want to believe, you choose to believe him despite it.

In this article, let's start with how many times he says any ads were 'insignificant.' Basing that on percentage of Facebook's total revenue, which is thoroughly irrelevant.

Or how about "another way to have framed this story is that powerful politicians who could severely harm Facebook’s business model were getting in the face of Facebook executives and essentially demanding that they come up with something to support the Democratic Party’s theory of “Russian meddling.” - a) I don't think Facebook's business model is in any danger, and b) "essentially demanding" is some pretty harsh words since nobody at Facebook seems to be saying that at all.

Maybe 'sloppy' is the wrong word - he certainly did research - but it's his usual slant of telling us what to conclude based on the (lack of!) facts.

[Jimbo]

I've given you tons of examples in the past, but since he promotes the narrative you want to believe, you choose to believe him despite it.

In this article, let's start with how many times he says any ads were 'insignificant.' Basing that on percentage of Facebook's total revenue, which is thoroughly irrelevant.

Or how about "another way to have framed this story is that powerful politicians who could severely harm Facebook’s business model were getting in the face of Facebook executives and essentially demanding that they come up with something to support the Democratic Party’s theory of “Russian meddling.” - a) I don't think Facebook's business model is in any danger, and b) "essentially demanding" is some pretty harsh words since nobody at Facebook seems to be saying that at all.

Maybe 'sloppy' is the wrong word - he certainly did research - but it's his usual slant of telling us what to conclude based on the (lack of!) facts.

Thanks T! I see your point. However, as an investigative journalist I, as a news consumer, appreciate Parry's doggedness and his asking/posing tough and sometimes only tangentially relevant questions which these papers of note seem to fail to ask themselves. There is a petition going around proposing that Parry be made the editor of the NYT. Then we'd see some afflicted comfortables.

[Davey the Fat Boy]

Thankfully that petition has zero chance of success.

I got through most of that shitty Parry article. Generally I'll give an article my full attention, but he had meandered so far from the subject at the point I stopped that it seemed like a whole other article.

But as for the part that pertained to the Post article - it's a pretty fact-free ride. He cites no other sources, so all he's really supposedly doing is attempting to poke holes in the Post article. He accuses them of a few sins of omission, but then commits several of his own. For instance, he ignores the fact that the post quotes an account of the Obama/Zuckerberg conversations as saying that Obama only inquired about fake news, not other Russian meddling. Parry ignores that and just makes accusations to the contrary with no basis.

He also leaves out the fact that Facebook contacted the FBI about suspicious Russian activity in June of 2016. Apparently Parry didn't find that to be a significant data point.

Finally - I'd love to have a dollar for every time Parry attributes motivations to someone he's talking about (almost always without a single source attribution to back it up). It's beyond laughable that he's lecturing anyone else on their journalistic acumen.

The fact that he actually sidetracks the whole piece to talk about the "failing Democratic brand" and then bizarrely litigates things like the Clapper memo, supposed "false claims" about RT, and media portrayal of the invasion of Ukraine ought to make anyone with an IQ over 12 suspicious.

Jimbo...I'll challenge you to show me where Parry sources this section of that article:

"The Democratic leaders wanted this finding as an explanation for Hillary Clinton’s stunning defeat, rather than going through the painful process of examining why the party has steadily lost ground in white working-class areas across the country."

Note that he doesn't say, "they give the appearance of wanting...". Nope. He reports his opinion as if it were fact. And he does so in an article in which he condescendingly states that the WAPO writers are guilty of violating the reporting standard of "show, don't tell" by not giving an example of extreme political speech.

Anyhow - let me know when you've found his source for that quote.

[Snarfyguy]

I think we're talking about apples and oranges here.

We understand politics through the filter of the news media and Jimbo wants to talk about how that's all fucked up, with these biased news sources.

I'm trying to talk about the viability of the presidency, which is another matter, that's necessarily yoked to Jimbo's but which is still a distinct thing. The rest is media studies, which is great, but again I make a distinction in topic.