That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons bring us some web forums whereupon we can gather
http://www.octopusoverlords.com/forum/
Just a good time for me to point this out.
I indeed miss when we had a wee bit of international news like this instead of stories about Trump's penis.
What a great morning. Think I'll catch up on some news. Now, let's see...there's that big storm in Florida. So let's just search the 'net for "Florida storms and Trump's penis". Ah, there we go. Looks bad! Well, the storm at least.
I need to cheer myself up now! Let's search for "Funny cat videos and Trump's penis". There we go. Ah, look at that little dickens. Now let's take a look at that cat video!
WASHINGTON — Russians working for a close ally of President Vladimir V. Putin engaged in an elaborate campaign of “information warfare” to interfere with the midterm elections, federal prosecutors said on Friday in announcing they had charged one of them in the plot.
The woman, Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova, 44, of St. Petersburg, was involved in an effort “to spread distrust towards candidates for U.S. political office and the U.S. political system,” prosecutors said.
Ms. Khusyaynova managed millions of dollars for a company owned by Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, a Russian oligarch who was previously indicted on charges of interfering in the 2016 presidential election, to finance foreign influence activities directed at the United States. Some of the money was spent on advertising on social media in the United States, buying internet domain names and “promoting news postings on social networks.”
The conspirators seized on divisions in American politics, prosecutors said, including immigration, guns, race relations, women and even the debate over the protests by National Football League players during the national anthem. They adopted a variety of ideological perspectives, writing on varied topics and from opposing views, prosecutors said. No one was named in court papers besides Ms. Khusyaynova.
“An engineer at Facebook notified the company in October 2014 that entities with a Russian IP address were pulling 3 billion data points a day [from your website]. “
MOSCOW — The head of Russia's GRU military intelligence agency that the West has blamed for a string of brazen attacks died on Wednesday after "a serious and long illness," the Russian defense ministry said.
State news agency TASS cited the ministry as saying Igor Korobov, 62, who ran the spy agency since 2016, had been made a Hero of Russia for his service in the post, the highest state award.
...
Speculation about Korobov's fate had been growing since an unconfirmed Russian media report that he had been summoned by President Vladimir Putin after the Skripal affair and severely criticized for the operation which left the Skripals alive and the GRU a target of mockery in the Western media.
Korobov was absent from a ceremony in Moscow this month where Putin and other senior officials celebrated the centenary of the GRU, with the Russian leader praising its skill and "unique abilities."
Reminds me of Trump saying the only problem with the Khashoggi torture/murder/dismemberment was the cover up.Smoove_B wrote: ↑Tue Dec 04, 2018 2:14 pm What a world we live in:
MOSCOW — The head of Russia's GRU military intelligence agency that the West has blamed for a string of brazen attacks died on Wednesday after "a serious and long illness," the Russian defense ministry said.
State news agency TASS cited the ministry as saying Igor Korobov, 62, who ran the spy agency since 2016, had been made a Hero of Russia for his service in the post, the highest state award.
...
Speculation about Korobov's fate had been growing since an unconfirmed Russian media report that he had been summoned by President Vladimir Putin after the Skripal affair and severely criticized for the operation which left the Skripals alive and the GRU a target of mockery in the Western media.
Korobov was absent from a ceremony in Moscow this month where Putin and other senior officials celebrated the centenary of the GRU, with the Russian leader praising its skill and "unique abilities."
At first they were using Trump mostly as an icebreaker. They expected Hillary to win and wanted to discredit her completely. Trump was the perfect vehicle for discrediting not only Hillary but the entire electoral system. Putin’s great advantage is that, unlike Soviet propagandists, he is not selling an ideology. I call him the merchant of doubt. His message is, We are shit, you are shit, and all of this is bullshit. What democracy? Trump was the ideal agent of chaos.
Trump kept saying that the election will be rigged. This was the Kremlin line. I think their main script was that Hillary would win in a close battle and #ElectionIsRigged would be a hashtag that would discredit her. She would be paralyzed. She’d be facing a Republican congress, which would immediately begin impeachment proceedings.
And then they saw that they had a shot at the jackpot. In its last stages, the campaign changed. They started using WikiLeaks when they sensed that they had a chance of getting Trump into office.
...
Putin’s dictatorship is different from twentieth-century dictatorships in that it is driven primarily by money. It’s not imperialism in its purest form. He doesn’t have the desire to attack and conquer everyone. He has no ideology. He sows chaos: break up NATO, break up the European Union, create chaos in America. In the end, he is concerned only with maintaining his own power, and his own power depends on demonstrating his might and uniqueness to his own guys, his own henchmen and cronies.
What do you think of comparisons between Trump and Putin?
Their backgrounds are different. Putin is not a public person; he is a K.G.B. agent. He is underhanded in everything he does. Trump acts openly and brazenly. Sure, he has to disguise things, but he does that by piling on lies and fake information. I think Trump envies Putin his ability to do things that Trump can’t do by definition. Putin doesn’t have to be concerned with the media or with parliament. Trump resents wasting his precious time on speaking to the press. And then he has to push things through, lobby for them—all that takes time. I think the way Trump acts around dictators comes from his feelings of a sort of inferiority: he’d like to be like them, but he can’t. If he is reëlected, it will be a tragedy—nothing will rein him in.
As of mid-morning on January 3, the day after the president’s repetition of Soviet-Putinist propaganda in the Cabinet room, there has been no attempt by the White House to tidy things up: no presidential tweet, no corrective statement. The president’s usual defenders—Sean Hannity, Fox & Friends, the anti-anti-Trump Twitter chorus—have likewise ignored the whole matter. They’re back to denouncing the Steele dossier, fulminating against Mueller, and reprising the Clinton-email drama. There’s apparently nothing they can think of to say in exoneration or excuse.
Putin-style glorification of the Soviet regime is entering the mind of the president, inspiring his words and—who knows—perhaps shaping his actions. How that propaganda is reaching him—by which channels, via which persons—seems an important if not urgent question. But maybe what happened yesterday does not raise questions. Maybe it inadvertently reveals answers.
When Trump said (paraphrasing) that the Soviet Union became just Russia after it invaded Afghanistan, he echoed Putin's dream to restore the empire. Insofar as Putin dreams of anything but his own wealth and power.Carpet_pissr wrote: ↑Fri Jan 04, 2019 2:58 am I must have missed the "Soviet-Putinist propaganda". What is that referring to?
linkThe U.S. military blocked Internet access to an infamous Russian entity seeking to sow discord among Americans during the 2018 midterms, several U.S. officials said, a warning that the Kremlin’s operations against the United States are not cost-free.
I didn't remember this:In the months before Kirstjen Nielsen was forced to resign, she tried to focus the White House on one of her highest priorities as homeland security secretary: preparing for new and different Russian forms of interference in the 2020 election.
President Trump’s chief of staff told her not to bring it up in front of the president.
...
But in a meeting this year, Mick Mulvaney, the White House chief of staff, made it clear that Mr. Trump still equated any public discussion of malign Russian election activity with questions about the legitimacy of his victory. According to one senior administration official, Mr. Mulvaney said it “wasn’t a great subject and should be kept below his level.”
Seems reasonable.Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, John R. Bolton, eliminated the position of cybersecurity coordinator at the White House last year, leaving junior aides to deal with the issue.
A sane democracy would be bending every effort towards this threat five minutes after it was discovered.Defiant wrote: ↑Mon Apr 29, 2019 6:38 pm Russian Hackers Were ‘In a Position’ to Alter Florida Voter Rolls, Rubio Confirms
