dobbylessons

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It’s 2017. Your Phone Monitors You.

It's weird to mock those who claim there are recordings of Trump & Co. doing crimes. It's 2017. Your phone is a surveillance device.  What you should be doing is coming to grips with the probability that every single thing you've ever done on your phone is obtainable by any law enforcement agency with enough resources to decide to gather that information, namely, the FBI.

You're carrying around a computer that is constantly in contact with wifi networks of dubious security. Every text, email, and note on your phone passes through servers owned by someone else. They're subpoena-able. Your phone's microphone can hear you, integrate what words you've said, and utilize the content of those words to target ads to you.

Which brings us to Trump/Russia. You really think it's farfetched that every cell phone of every player in Trump/Russia was turned into a mic for the FBI? Why? It’s not. It is extremely, extremely likely in my opinion that the FBI conducted at least some surveillance using phones of the Trump Bunch.

Before you think that's just more evidence of gov overreach remember that I am voluntarily conducting surveillance on myself right now, typing this. Every little Facebook quiz you took last year & the year before told the algorithm how you'd respond to targeted disinformation. You are volunteering all of your family information and school affiliations and political opinions daily, and so am I. It's not the government.  It’s us. Don't blame the government for surveillance you're enthusiastically participating in. That's silly. Just be aware that it's real. Think how carefully you'd have to conduct your modern life not to be participating in this surveillance. Now think about how un-careful the Trump Bunch are.

I’ll give you two examples. First, Paul Manafort’s Midnight Raid. That early-morning FBI raid on Manafort looks to me like it came up because Manafort claimed he had turned over all of his notes from that meeting to the Senate, but *somehow* the Senate knew that was not true. They knew it wasn’t true because he had been taking notes on his phone during the meeting. Since they knew he didn’t turn them all over, someone in the federal government must have the notes. 

Second? This Buzzfeed article, out today, that says on January 5, 2017, Mike Flynn, Steve Bannon, and Jared Kushner met up with King Abdullah II of Jordan in Manhattan to talk about nukes. Check it out:

Three individuals — one close to Flynn, a second close to Kushner, and a third close to Bannon — denied that the nuclear deal came up in the meeting with the Jordanian king. But the source familiar with the law enforcement document said participants talked about Israeli-Palestinian relations, intelligence sharing between America and Jordan on Syria, ISIS — and the nuclear proposal.

So, 3 people asked about this lied about the content of the meeting, but there was a LAW ENFORCEMENT DOCUMENT that had the truth of what they really talked about.

How did a LAW ENFORCEMENT agency get that document? They probably made it. It’s probably a transcript or a memo of the contents of the conversation. The FBI is the law enforcement agency of the federal government, and they definitely create memos. How would the FBI have the info they needed to write a document about what was discussed in the meeting? 2 possibilities:

1) They were conducting surveillance at the time so they knew what was said.

2) One of the meeting’s attendees told the FBI that they did talk about nukes. This would likely only have happened if one of Kushner, Bannon, or Flynn is cooperating with the FBI as a witness. This is also possible.

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When Microsoft sued Fancy Bear, it sought a default judgment and injunction, and obtained it on August 22, 2017.

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 Microsoft sued Fancy Bear in August 2016. This is the Complaint.

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Comey the White Hat.

This has the feel, to me, of a hit piece on the Obama White House, because it states that the Obama White House blocked Comey from telling the American people about the Russian security threat.

http://www.newsweek.com/fbi-director-james-comey-russian-tampering-election-576417

But the quotes from the sources don't say that the White House said to do nothing; it says the White House said that a single op ed wasn't appropriate, because it didn't seem strong enough:

"The other national security leaders didn’t like the idea, and White House officials thought the announcement should be a coordinated message backed by multiple agencies, the source says. “An op-ed doesn’t have the same stature, it comes from one person.”

The op-ed would not have mentioned whether the FBI was investigating Donald Trump’s campaign workers or others close to him for links to the Russians’ interference in the election, a second source with knowledge of the request tells Newsweek. Comey would likely have tried to publish the op-ed in The New York Times, and it would have included much of the same information as the bombshell declassified intelligence report released January 6, which said Russian President Vladimir Putin tried to influence the presidential election, the source said."

Remember that the report said Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, and denigrate Secretary Clinton and harm her electability and potential presidency, that the U.S. intelligence community had “high confidence” in its judgments, and, “We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump.”

Ok, so that wouldn't have stated that Trump was under FBI investigation. That would've said what many reports that were lost in the noise actually did say, all summer long. The relevant question, it seems to me, is whether the FBI was going to come out and say Trump was under FBI investigation (since that's what the email bombshell implied about Clinton to many people.) So what would an op-ed in July have done?

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Oh, THIS is how the interference in the voter rolls, DNC,and RNC fits together. They use that information to target disinformation to specific voters in specific places, and they gamed the electoral college with it.

Manafort told Trump to stay in Michigan...

"The voter rolls are said to fit into this because of "microtargeting". Using email, Facebook and Twitter, political advertising can be tailored very precisely: individual messaging for individual voters.

'You are stealing the stuff and pushing it back into the US body politic,' said the former official, 'you know where to target that stuff when you're pushing it back.' This would take co-operation with the Trump campaign, it is claimed."

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Hillary Clinton Is A True Leader

American elections are bigger than just us. Our heretofore "special status" as a superpower that chooses occasionally to support democracy and civil society efforts around the world makes the ceremonies of our democracy uniquely important.

Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton, winner of the popular vote, went around the world as the Secretary of State and told leaders of new democracies how American presidential transitions work. She reports in her book that she held herself out as an example: someone who lost a hotly contested primary battle to Barack Obama, and who threw her support to him, campaigned for him, and ultimately joined his administration. She explains in her book that they were befuddled by the idea that she would do any of those things. They didn't really get it, on a gut level, how the peaceful transition of power between presidents after close elections works, because their countries suffer dictators holding over power using military violence, and things like that.

So now, we see that Hillary Clinton meant what she said, every time she said this election was important and American democracy was important for the world. She's showing up to model democracy for every foreign government in the 112 countries she personally visited. Imagine how much worse America would look if she didn't show up to this?

She's still here. She's still doing her best to make America look, to the world, more consistent and more democratic than we really are. In my opinion, her attendance today is a profound service to this country, since it underscores the importance of her words on behalf of the Obama administration from 2009-2013. Her attendance is true leadership.

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How to resist.

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Pushy, glam bitches save lives.

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America’s Options Now

Historically, in established democracies, there are 3 options for how a heavily compromised election is resolved: Pennsylvania, Austria, Ukraine provide illustrative examples.

PENNSYLVANIA

In 1994, a federal district judge in PA ruled that a State Senate race in which the Democratic candidate won in the election over the Republican had to flip the other way, because the voter fraud and interference was so bad that the Democrat who won in the count should lose his seat and the Republican should take it instead. " 'Substantial evidence was presented establishing massive absentee ballot fraud, deception, intimidation, harassment and forgery,' Judge Newcomer wrote in a decision made public today."

AUSTRIA

In December 2016, Austria had a new election EIGHT MONTHS afterAustria’s supreme court annulled the result of the election in May, 2016 and ordered a re-run following irregularities during the vote count. The candidate who won in May, Mr. Van der Bellen, prevailed over his far-right wing challenger both times, and increased the margin of victory in the December re-run election.

UKRAINE

In February 2014, Ukrainians drove from power their pro-Russian leader, Victor Yanukovych, whose candidacy in 2010 was supported by Trump's campaign manager Paul Manafort. Yanukovych's election was illegitimate, and he imprisoned his opponent after his victory. He was overthrown in the Maidan Revolution in which 103 civilian protesters and 13 police were killed. He is now living in exile in Russia and wanted for high treason in Ukraine.

THE FOURTH OPTION

This last is for unstable democracies, including countries with a recent history of civil war and totalitarian rule. Otherwise known as the Russia/Congo option. I don't think this is likely in America, because the norm in Congo is a combination of civil war, dictatorship, and fledgling democracy, and the norm in Russia is dictatorship masquerading as democracy.

December 2016, President Joseph Kabila, who took over in 2001 following his father's assassination, held onto power again after his mandate expired at midnight on December 21, 2016. "Security forces" killed 26 protesters and arrested 300 people. Kabila is still in power and now allying with the Catholic Church to control people and quell dissent.

December 2011, massive protests break out after Moscow parliamentary elections appear to have been the subject of widespread fraud, and result in a major win for Vladimir Putin's United Russia party. Protests were organized on several different days in December in more than 80 cities around the country. Protests continued into 2012. Putin blamed Hillary Clinton's "foreign interference" for the protests. Hundreds were arrested at each protest.

In June 2012, Putin changed the laws and set strict boundaries on protests and imposed heavy penalties for unauthorized actions. As of January 2013, interviews by Ellen Barry of The New York Times of working class elements which had supported the protests revealed an atmosphere of intimidation, discouragement, and alienation.

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See more here: Here’s how Trump’s inauguration will go, according to cartoonists

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Megyn Kelly’s Racism Supports Propaganda

At Slate: “Megyn Kelly is a Racial Demagogue”

Kelly's racism is important because it undoes any claims that she has effectively mounted any resistance to Trump.

American racism is this country's foremost national security vulnerability. Fomenting existing racism and using it as a wedge is and was an essential part of Russian propaganda. Playing on long-held racist convictions which people don't want to question in themselves was an incredibly effective way to sow discord and animus in Americans throughout the Obama presidency and throughout the presidential campaign.

Disinformation that encourages division, hatred, and dehumanization is a tool of war. It's clear what side she is on.

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"Tracing individual strands of disinformation is difficult, but in Sweden and elsewhere, experts have detected a characteristic pattern that they tie to Kremlin-generated disinformation campaigns. “The dynamic is always the same: It originates somewhere in Russia, on Russia state media sites, or different websites or somewhere in that kind of context,” said Anders Lindberg, a Swedish journalist and lawyer. “Then the fake document becomes the source of a news story distributed on far-left or far-right-wing websites,” he said. “Those who rely on those sites for news link to the story, and it spreads. Nobody can say where they come from, but they end up as key issues in a security policy decision.” Although the topics may vary, the goal is the same, Mr. Lindberg and others suggested. “What the Russians are doing is building narratives; they are not building facts,” he said. “The underlying narrative is, ‘Don’t trust anyone.’”

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How American Racism Changed

I’ve been talking a lot about Russian hacking with many non-white people I know, and almost all of them tell me that America’s racist enough to elect Donald Trump with no influence from Russia. 

You’ll hear no argument from me that American racism is a vicious and enduring disease in our society. It’s given us terrible sociopaths as president before. There’s a robust argument that the election of 2016 mirrors that of 1872, the first one after the Civil War, in more than the popular vote loss by the person who would eventually become president. Many people think that 2016 is a repetition of 1872 because Rutherford B. Hayes was elected president in a backroom deal in a trade for pulling federal troops out of the South and ending Reconstruction specifically because Southerners were so hopping mad at the election of Black people to public office in formerly Confederate states. Many people quite rightly see that the 150 years that’s passed since then has hardly dimmed American white supremacy, and a Black president has caused this Third Reconstruction we are living in now. 

That’s a well-researched and accurate description of what has happened, in my opinion.

But.

It isn’t mutually exclusive with Russian interference, or with a shift toward valorizing Russia and its White Nationalist dictator among people who used to describe anything bad as “Soviet,” for decades. Russian interference worked with American racism, not against it, or in place of it. ��

American racist rhetoric during the Cold War overtly linked social programs that would benefit Black people, poor people, and women with Soviet-style social programs. Any social program was in danger of “Soviet-izing” Americans. People who worked on behalf of Black people, especially, were routinely accused of being Russian intervenors or Commies. Remember, “commie” has always been code for “Soviet”, and for “un-American.” 

Just think of Pat Buchanan. He killed Nixon’s plan for universal child care, which Nixon had championed for years, by describing it as a commie operation, and garnered support against universal child care among the vaunted “white working class” by, essentially, CREATING the Religious Right:

On the advice of Pat Buchanan, his special assistant, [Nixon] issued a scathing veto. Calling it “a long leap into the dark for the United States Government and the American people” and “the most radical piece of legislation” to emerge the current Congress, Nixon’s veto bemoaned the “family-weakening implications” of the bill. “[F]or the Federal Government to plunge headlong financially into supporting child development would commit the vast moral authority of the National Government to the side of communal approaches to child rearing over against the family-centered approach,” he stated at the end....

Daycare became a flashpoint. “I remember seeing books with these really alarming pictures of state-funded nurseries in the Soviet Union,” Steenland recalled. “Swaddled infants tightly wrapped in rows of beds side by side, massive rows, and it was impersonal and supposed to be terrifying. And it was like: this is daycare.”

American racists used to HATE Russia. Commies were their absolute favorite bogeyman. “Commies” always meant liberals and race traitors. Think of how they called Obama a socialist! 

But in 2013-2015, something changed. Suddenly, the same white American racists who called Obama a socialist for 6 years began praising Putin out loud. Here’s Pat Buchanan himself, aligning with Putin against an America that would elect Barack Obama.  This turn toward Russia marks a huge change in the pedagogy of American racism. Russia used to be the anti-America, which would undo America’s status as Defender of the Free World. Now, even the people who invented the phrase “the Free World” are discussing how great Putin is.

This is the result of more than just plain old American racism. This comes from a global white supremacist effort that has joined the old Religious Right and the Russian White Nationalists and the other fascist subgroups in Europe. It’s a lot bigger and a lot scarier than we think.

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The Obama Administration has imposed a host of new sanctions against Russia and Russian intelligence agencies, and expelled 35 Russian diplomats whom the Administration now declares “intelligence operatives.” 

“As of noon on Friday, the U.S. also will bar Russian access to two Moscow-owned "recreational compounds," the White House said. No further detail was provided, but since 1972, the Russians have owned a historic estate overlooking the Chester River in eastern Maryland. They also own a recreation facility in Glen Cove, Long Island.”

The government also released its declassified report on Russian election interference and cyber hacking, titled “Grizzly Steppe: Russian Malicious Cyber Activity.”

Here’s my question: What does it mean to impose sanctions on particular intelligence agencies?