Tag: MAINSTREAM MEDIA

Rep. Steve Scalise Confirms House GOP Will Now Add $5 Billion in Funding For Border Security

by Cristina Laila December 20, 2018

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House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) confirmed Thursday that the House will add $5 billion in funding for border security plus additional money for disaster relief to the current interim bill after President Trump refused to sign the bill that came from the Senate last night.

Ryan Nobles: Steve Scalise confirms House GOP will add $5b in funding for border security + money for disaster relief to current CR. When he was told there is likely not enough votes for that to pass he said: “that’s a negative attitude.”

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Congressman Scalise says GOP leaders are talking to a lot of members to whip the votes.

PERGRAM: Scalise on government funding & if they have the votes for the new plan: “We’re talking to a lot of members now.”

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Earlier Thursday, Rep. Mark Meadows, VP Mike Pence, Rep. Mo Brooks, Rep. Paul Ryan were all seen entering the White House for a meeting.

Paul Ryan emerged from the meeting and said President Trump will not sign the interim spending bill that came from the Senate last night.

President Trump now put a tremendous amount of pressure on the House to provide border wall funding in the bill or it’s lights out in less than 48 hours.

If the House approves of the bill with the new changes to include border wall funding, it goes back to the Senate to get approved.

The State Department has already been directed to prepare for a shutdown, reports FOX News.

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Russiagate eats itself: Democrat ‘tech experts’ try their hands at election meddling, report reveals

Russiagate eats itself: Democrat 'tech experts' try their hands at election meddling, report reveals

Doug Jones & Roy Moore © Reuters / Reuters Photographer

A group of Democrats working in secret replicated the deceptive social media tactics they claim Russians used to steal the 2016 election in order to win the 2017 Alabama Senate race, according to an explosive NYT report.

The primarily social-media-based campaign to bolster the candidacy of Democrat Doug Jones and smear Republican Roy Moore implemented many of the divisive techniques outlined in the reports released earlier this week on Russian social media influence operations, according to an internal report on the effort acquired by the New York Times. Such resemblance is not surprising, given that one of the Alabama effort’s ringleaders was Jonathon Morgan, whose company New Knowledge produced one of those reports.

ALSO ON RT.COMRacist ‘Russians’ targeted African-Americans in 2016 election ploy, reports claimThe campaign was clearly meant to remain classified – the Times’ attempts to interview participants were as often as not met with claims of “I don’t remember” or pleading the Fifth. Others downplay the effect of their actions, or claim they were just meddling in the name of research. But, as much as they claim their actions had no consequences, they succeeded in electing the first Democrat to represent Alabama in the Senate for over 25 years.

In order to paint Roy Moore as the Kremlin candidate, the manipulators linked his campaign to thousands of Russian Twitter accounts that all started following him at once – drawing the attention and suspicion of the media, which obediently published rumors that his support numbers were artificially bolstered by Russian bots.

Morgan claims the botnet “false flag” – a term that actually appears in the report – “does not ring a bell,” dismissing the project as “a small experiment” in tactics that were not meant to sway the election. He pleads the Fifth on the report’s claims that the Alabama project intended to “enrage and energize Democrats” and “depress turnout” among Republicans, weaponizing accusations that Moore had tried to seduce teen girls while in his 30s. Morgan also claims to forget the names of the Twitter and Facebook accounts he set up to manipulate Moore voters.

Backed into a corner, Morgan finally opted to lie to the Times, claiming that while the project did create a generic Facebook page to lure conservative Alabamans, and was in contact with write-in candidate (and Moore rival) Mac Watson, its influence efforts stopped there. The report tells a different story: the Facebook page “boosted” Watson’s campaign, getting him interviews with major media outlets, and swelling the ranks of his Twitter followers. Watson confirms he received media assistance from a Facebook page with no human face to it – the only page that replied to his contact.

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© REUTERS / Rebecca Cook‘Beyond understanding’: Kremlin blasts fresh US reports on alleged Russian election meddling

“The research project was intended to help us understand how these kind of campaigns operated,” Morgan told the Times. “We thought it was useful to work in the context of a real election but design it to have almost no impact.”

It’s a truism that so-called “coastal elites” have only disdain for Middle America, but the way Morgan describes the Alabama special election as an inconsequential throwaway contest fit only for a science experiment is eye-opening.

Morgan, it’s worth noting, was one of the developers of the infamous “Hamilton68” dashboard, beloved by Western media for its ability to link any troublesome narrative to “Russian bots.” Morgan’s co-developer, Clint Watts, has since distanced himself from the bot crusade, admitting he’s “not convinced on this bot thing.”

Everyone the Times spoke with was careful to shunt blame elsewhere. Renee diResta, who works with Morgan at New Knowledge and was the lead author of the group’s Russian report, said: “I know there were people who believed the Democrats needed to fight fire with fire,” emphasizing that she was not one of these people.

Moore campaign operatives remain frustrated at their narrow margin of loss – just 21,924 votes, less than the number of write-in ballots that were cast. They complained to Facebook about possible interference but were brushed off. Presented with incontrovertible evidence of wrongdoing by their opponents, Moore campaign manager Rich Hobson acknowledged that “any and all of these things could make a difference.”

“We still kick ourselves that Judge Moore didn’t win,” he said.

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(FAKE NEWS) – CNN’s 2014 ‘Journalist of the Year’ Made Up at Least 14 Stories

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In a truly fitting turn of events, news broke Thursday that Claas Relotius, a German journalist named CNN’s 2014 “Journalist of the Year” made up at least 14 stories contributed to German publication Der Spiegal. 

“The reporter contributed around 60 articles to Der Spiegel, one of the leading German magazines for investigative reporting,” according to Fox News. “He previously worked for other publications in Europe and won awards such as CNN Journalist of the Year in 2014.”

CNN, which has been branded a fake news by President Donald J. Trump and millions of ordinary Americans – and curiously wonders why on a daily basis – awarded a bona fide fake news writer an award for the quality of his journalism. Sometimes the jokes write themselves.

“The fabricated articles include a phone interview with the parents of free agent NFL player Colin Kaepernick and a story about an American woman who claims to have volunteered to witness the executions of death row inmates,” according to the report.

Trending: Freedom Caucus Seizes House Floor To Fight For The Wall

Relotius’ web of lies began to unravel in November when a reporter with whom he worked on a story about an Arizona border militia realized that Relotius had fabricated interviews.

According to the report, residents of Fergus Falls, Minn. were enraged to find that Relotius wrote an entirely fabricated story about their town after spending nearly three weeks investigating there. The story, which fabricated people, quotes, and nearly everything about the town cast President Donald J. Trump in a negative light. It was titled “Where They Pray for Trump on Sundays.”

The report said that Relotius admitted that he is unwell.

“I am sick and I need to get help,” he reportedly told Der Spiegel.

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(GLOBALISTS) -George Soros crowned ‘person of the year’ by Financial Times, but not everyone is cheering

George Soros crowned ‘person of the year’ by Financial Times, but not everyone is cheering

Georges Soros (L) ; Anti-Orban demonstrators in Hungary © Reuters / Charles Platiau / Laszlo Balogh

Being “under siege” from Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin has earned George Soros the FT’s ‘person of the year’ title. Eyebrows were raised over the not-at-all biased description of the billionaire as a champion of democracy.

For thirty years, liberal businessman and philanthropist Soros has used his vast wealth to crusade against“authoritarianism, racism and intolerance,” the FT profile reads.

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Armed with his expansive grant-giving network, Open Societies Foundations (OSF), the Hungarian-American spread his influence to some 100 countries across the globe. The NGO currently has annual expenditures of over $940 million, with 26 national and regional foundations and offices.

There’s hardly a question over whether the Soros-funded apparatus is doing the right thing. The first paragraph of the story says it just “helped thwart an allegedly corrupt nuclear power plant contract with Russia” – a feat to be admired in the liberal world.

“We haven’t stopped having a beneficial influence,” Soros is then quoted as saying.

ALSO ON RT.COMGeorge Soros’ Open Society foundation ends operations in Hungary

But there’s a worrying trend for the Democrat mega-donor, passionate advocate for open borders and outspoken critic of Brexit. More and more detractors see his work as an existential threat to conservative values and even state sovereignty.

The “standard bearer of liberal democracy and open society” has found his ideals “under siege” as he “has attracted the wrath of authoritarian regimes and, increasingly, the national populists who continue to gain ground,” writes FT.

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At one point Soros sounds a bit more critical of himself than the paper, as he acknowledges he’s a divisive figure, something he still believes indicates his effectiveness as an activist.

“I’m blamed for everything, including being the anti-Christ,” Soros says. “I wish I didn’t have so many enemies, but I take it as an indication that I must be doing something right.”

Soros wasn’t joking. Hungarian lawmaker Andras Aradszki of the Christian Democratic People’s Party (KDNP) once declared that it is a Christian’s duty to oppose Soros’ calls for Europe to take in asylum seekers from Africa and the Middle East – what Aradszki called “Satan’s Soros plan.” The lawmaker added that “Soros and his comrades want to destroy the independence and values of nation states.”

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In May, the OSF ended its operations in Hungary, citing an “increasingly repressive political and legal environment.” A month later, Hungary’s parliament passed the ‘Stop Soros’ law which threatens jail time for anyone helping illegal immigrants claim asylum.

Hungarian PM Viktor Orban accused Soros of attempting to use mass migration to undermine Europe’s stability.

“Soros has antagonized not only us but also England, President Trump and Israel too,” Orban said in February.“Everywhere he wants to get migration accepted. It won’t work. We are not alone and we will fight together… and we will succeed.”

ALSO ON RT.COMHungary approves ‘Stop Soros’ law criminalizing aid to illegal migrants

In the UK, the billionaire has been sharply criticized for his donations of over £800,000 ($1,062,000) to pro-EU campaigns. The pledges included £400,000 to Best for Britain, a campaign group that has been at the forefront of anti-Brexit activism.

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The businessman’s activities have received similar hostility in the United States, where some have accused him of providing assistance to the so-called “migrant caravan” which made its way from Central America to the US’ southern border. “The venom, long concealed among extreme right networks, has leaked into the mainstream,” laments the FT.

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Soros, along with other notable critics of Donald Trump, such as former President Barack Obama, the Clintons and CNN, was recently targeted by an alleged pipe bomb mailed to his home in New York.

A prominent backer of the Democratic Party, Soros has called Trump a “danger to the world,” and once (wrongly) bet that stocks would collapse if Donald won presidency. The bet reportedly cost him $1 billion – quite affordable for the investor who is currently worth $8.3 billion after his 2017 transfer of $18 billion to the OSF.

ALSO ON RT.COM‘Lock him up!’ Smiling Trump joins chant against Soros (VIDEO)

For a man who made billions short-selling the UK pound sterling and has been accused of several more currency crises in Asia, FT’s Soros comes across as a wise old benefactor “looking beyond his formidable legacy” in his “twilight years.”

READ MORE: Soros sold off Facebook stocks before they tanked, documents show

But for all the accolades, the paper may have forgotten that the businessman has long had his sights set on a title more ambitious than merely the ‘person’ of the year. In a 1993 interview with the UK Independent, Soros actually confessed that he suffers from a god complex.

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“It is a sort of disease when you consider yourself some kind of god, the creator of everything, but I feel comfortable about it now since I began to live it out,” he said.

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FACEBOOK ADMITS GIVING OUT ACCESS TO YOUR PRIVATE MESSAGES

Facebook Admits Giving Out Access to Your Private Messages

Another privacy scandal erupts

Infowars.com – DECEMBER 19, 2018

Facebook says it gave other companies, such as Spotify and Netflix, access to millions of people’s private messages.

The social media giant admitted to the practice in response to a report that Facebook shares private data to partner companies as part of its third-party integration, which allowed users to use their Facebook credentials to login to other web sites and apps.

Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg (R), and Joel Kaplan (L), Vice President, Global Public Policy at Facebook, leave the Elysee Palace after a meeting with the French President on May 23, 2018 in Paris, France. On the eve of VivaTech, French President Emmanuel Macron brought together some of the world’s leading technology names for the Tech for Good event. (Photo by Aurelien Morissard/IP3/Getty Images)

Facebook wrote in a blog post:

Did partners get access to messages? Yes. But people had to explicitly sign in to Facebook first to use a partner’s messaging feature. Take Spotify for example. After signing in to your Facebook account in Spotify’s desktop app, you could then send and receive messages without ever leaving the app. Our API provided partners with access to the person’s messages in order to power this type of feature.

This practice, however, triggered a firestorm over the definition of consent, especially after Facebook’s former privacy chief Alex Stamos said that integration wasn’t to blame:

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Interestingly, according to Business Insider:

According to internal Facebook documents seen by the Times, Spotify could see the messages of more than 70 million Facebook users a month. The Times reported that Spotify, Netflix, and the Royal Bank of Canada could read, write, and even delete people’s messages.

Importantly, both Spotify and Netflix told the Times they were unaware they had this kind of broad access. Facebook told the New York Times it found no evidence of abuse.

Zero Hedge also reported:

Amazon was granted access to users’ names and contact information through their friends, while Yahoo! was able to view streams of friends’ posts as recently as this summer despite Facebook promising that it had stopped this type of sharing years earlier.

What’s more? China’s Huawei and Russian search giant Yandex – accused last year by Ukraine of funneling user data to the Kremlin – had access to Facebook’s unique user IDs.

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Facebook was able to circumvent a 2011 consent agreement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) which barred the company from sharing user data without explicit permission, because Facebook considered the partners extensions of itself – “service providers that allowed users to interact with their Facebook friends.” This allowed the company to grant such unprecedented access to everyone’s information. The partners were reportedly prohibited from using the personal information from purposes outside the scope of their agreement, however there has been little to no oversight.

Yesterday, Infowars reported that the NAACP was joining a long list of ideologically-diverse groups that were boycotting or otherwise moving away from Facebook.

“Over the last year, NAACP has expressed concerns about the numerous data breaches and privacy mishaps in which Facebook has been implicated,” wrote NAACP President Derrick Johnson. “And since the onset of the Silicon Valley boom, we have been openly critical about the lack of employee diversity among the top technology firms in the country.”

“Now, the time has come for our collective actions to emulate the severity of mistrust we have in Facebook.”

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More countries will not sign UN Migration Pact – Hungarian FM

IRENA IRIS SZEWCZYK

By LAURA CAT 19 December 2018

At a hearing of the Foreign Affairs Committee on Monday, foreign minister Péter Szijjártó tells Parliament that there are at least 13 countries set to vote against the UN Migration compact on 19 December.

The countries who will vote against the plan include the Visegrád Four group of Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, as well, Bulgaria, Latvia, Austria, the United States, Israel, Australia, Dominica and Brazil, Péter told at the hearing.

Minister Szijjártó also has asserted that Hungary will also reject the “sister document”, which has been hailed as even worse than the Migration pact, The Global Compact on Refugees.

This is is said to allow migrants to enter Europe “through a backdoor” and as the minister said, “Hungarian communities across the border will not be sacrificed for geopolitical interests or under international pressure”.

Referring to the “unbelievable pressure” western allies have deployed on Hungary in the effort to have Hungary relinquish its position vetoing Ukraine’s NATO integration, the foreign minister insists that Hungary would stand firm until “Ukraine drops its anti-Hungarian policies”.

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MSNBC’s Russia ‘expert’: Moscow terrorizing US with meme-filled ‘cruise missiles’ (VIDEO)

MSNBC’s Russia 'expert': Moscow terrorizing US with meme-filled ‘cruise missiles’ (VIDEO)

Malcolm Nance

Millions of impressionable American minds are being corrupted by Russian-linked memes, “the cruise missiles of fake news”, according to MSNBC’s self-anointed Russia expert. Everyone agrees that this is a reasonable observation.

Malcolm Nance, a former Navy cryptologist who studied Arabic and served in the Middle East, makes regular appearances on MSNBC, where he is given generous amounts of airtime to share his thoughts on all things Russia related. In his latest appearance on the network, Nance described how the destructive power of Russian-linked internet memes have apparently devastated America.

 

“The Internet Research agency built all these memes and tropes which became the cruise missiles of fake news and disinformation,” Nance said. He claimed that these nefarious meme-bombs have ravaged the mental faculties of “one third of the United States population,” leaving them unable to “believe what they see before their very eyes.” And of course, these JPEG-rockets “may have elected a president in the process.”

Photographs of these ghastly cruise missiles have been floating around on the internet in recent days, with many noting their astonishing level of sophistication.

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This is not the first time that Nance has deployed terrifying images of Russian meme missiles to warn Americans about the new Moscow menace: In a July interview he declared that, “As an information war, the payloads in the information cruise missiles that Russia launched at this country were propaganda products which had their origins in 1917, in the Bolshevik revolution.”

Months before that outburst, in March, Nance was quoted by the Washington Post as thoughtfully asking: “What happens if 100s of millions of progressives worldwide abandon Facebook because they think it’s a tool of Trump, Russia authoritarians and neo-Nazis? Facebook needs to own up and do damage control to ensure they are not 2018’s information cruise missile of choice.”

Nance really has a knack for inventive Russia commentary. He previously demonstrated his vast knowledge about the country by falsely claiming that Russian President Vladimir Putin was a “former director of the KGB.”

The “intelligence analyst” is also a savvy media observer, describing journalist Glenn Greenwald as “an agent of Trump & Moscow” after the Intercept editor attended a conference in Moscow.

When it comes to comparing GIFs to airstrikes, the MSNBC talking head keeps good company: Guardian writer Carole Cadwalladr once famously suggested that the UK was now at “war” with Russia. The reason? Russia’s Foreign Ministry changed its Twitter profile picture to a photograph of Maria Butina.

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Trump-Russia dossier was created so Clinton could challenge 2016 election results – Steele

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The British ex-spy who authored the infamous dossier alleging collusion between President Donald Trump and the Kremlin said one of his goals was to give Hillary Clinton legal basis to challenge the 2016 election results.

Christopher Steele’s salacious 17-page report was commissioned by Fusion GPS, a firm connected to Clinton’s campaign.

“Based on that advice, parties such as the Democratic National Committee and HFACC Inc. (also known as ‘Hillary for America’) could consider steps they would be legally entitled to take to challenge the validity of the outcome of that election,” Steele wrote in recently unsealed declaration that was published by the Washington Times.

ALSO ON RT.COMComey admits FBI failed to verify Steele Dossier it used to obtain a spy warrant on Trump’s aide

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His statement is part of a series of answers which Steele provided in a defamation suit brought by three Russians who head Alfa Bank, who were named in the dossier as part of the alleged collusion conspiracy between Trump and the Kremlin.

The court challenge never came. Instead, the unsubstantiated dossier was leaked to news outlets such as BuzzFeed, fuelling Russiagate hysteria and serving as the backbone of a two-year probe that has yet to corroborate any of the document’s core claims. The document was also used by the FBI to obtain a warrant to spy on former Trump aide Carter Page, who was accused by Steele of meeting secretly with Kremlin insiders in Moscow. Incredibly, former FBI Director James Comey admitted that his agency had not verified the dossier’s contents before using it to justify the warrant.
The dossier itself has apparently fallen out of favor with many of its early champions: One of the first journalists to report on Steele’s research has stated that many of Steele’s central claims have yet to be substantiated and are “likely false.”

ALSO ON RT.COMSteele dossier’s main claims ‘likely false,’ admits journalist who helped launch RussiagateThe defamation case against Steele was dismissed by a DC Superior Court judge, but lawyers representing the Russian bankers have launched an appeal in US District court, attaching Steele’s revelatory statements as part of their filing. Steele claimed that internet traffic data had been observed between Alfa Bank and a computer served linked to the Trump Organization. The allegation has yet to be proven, with some reports suggesting that the flagged data actually originated from an internet spam farm based outside Philadelphia.

Steele faces similar legal trouble in London, where he is being sued for defamation by Russian entrepreneur Aleksej Gubarev. In one of his memos, Steele accused Gubarev of personally hacking DNC computers. Gubarev has also sued BuzzFeed for publishing the unverified claim as part of its uncritical coverage of the dossier.

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