Majorityrights News > Category: Law & Order

The Mainichi, “Reports: Google uncovers ads by Russian operatives”, 9 Oct 2017:

NEW YORK (AP)—Russian operatives likely spent tens of thousands of dollars on ads across Google products, including YouTube and Google search, according to reports.

Accounts connected with the Russian government spent $4,700 on search and display ads, while another $53,000 was spent on ads with political material that were purchased from Russian territory, from Russian internet addresses, or with Russian currency, The New York Times reported . The Times cited an unnamed person familiar with the ongoing inquiry by the search giant.

The Washington Post earlier reported that the technology behemoth uncovered the Russian-backed disinformation campaign as it considers whether to testify before Congress next month, also citing anonymous sources familiar with the investigation. Social media companies Facebook and Twitter have already agreed to testify.

The reports said the company discovered the Russian presence by analyzing information shared by Twitter and Facebook, as well its own research and tips from outside researchers.

In a statement, Google said it has a “set of strict ads policies including limits on political ad targeting and prohibitions on targeting based on race and religion.”

“We are taking a deeper look to investigate attempts to abuse our systems, working with researchers and other companies, and will provide assistance to ongoing inquiries,” the statement continued.

Facebook recently shared about 3,000 Russian-backed ads with Congress.

The lack of turn out from Milwaukee voters is suspicious.

U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin directed a disinformation campaign aimed at helping Donald Trump win the presidential election.

“Conservative” talk-show hosts Charilie Sykes and John Ziegler talk about their disillusionment with Trump and his supporters; how his campaign was facilitated by the influx of conspiratorial and other fringe right influences, particularly when the Drudge Report started linking to and thus mainstreaming and “normalizing” Alex Jones.

Active Measures is suspected of having had a significant impact on the Milwaukee area of Wisconsin in terms of voter turn out.

Hayley Geftman-Gold, Twitter

NY Post, “CBS exec fired for unsympathetic Vegas massacre post”, 2 Oct 2017:

A CBS legal executive who said she had no sympathy for the victims killed in Las Vegas because they were “country music fans” — and therefore likely Republican — has been fired.

Hayley Geftman-Gold posted the ugly comments on social media about Sunday’s massacre in a conversation over gun control.

“If they wouldn’t do anything when children were murdered I have no hope that Repugs will ever do the right thing,” she wrote on Facebook. “I’m actually not even sympathetic bc country music fans often are Republican gun toters.”

CBS promptly canned her.

“This individual, who was with us for approximately one year, violated the standards of our company and is no longer an employee of CBS,” the network told The Post in a statement.

“Her views as expressed on social media are deeply unacceptable to all of us at CBS. Our hearts go out to the victims in Las Vegas and their families.”

“Miss Grand Myanmar”, Shwe Eain Si, has been stripped of her title just days before she was due to compete in a leading international beauty pageant by organizers Miss Grand International. The nineteen year old had released a video statement in which she basically told the truth about the cause of the crisis in Rakhine State - Mancinblack

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMF3OF7NbNk

The Local, “Marseille attacker released by police day before stabbing rampage”, 2 Oct 2017:

Tragic: The two victims of the Marseille knife attack were identified by their first names as cousins and best friends Mauranne (left) and Laura (right), both 20

The man who stabbed two young women to death in Marseille in an attack claimed by the Islamic State group used seven different identities and had been arrested just days earlier, French prosecutors said Monday.

The man who stabbed two young women to death in Marseille in an attack claimed by the Islamic State group used seven different identities and had been arrested just days earlier, French prosecutors said Monday.

Authorities said the man, who was shot dead by anti-terror troops after Sunday’s attack outside the southern city’s main train station, had previously used a Tunisian passport under the name Ahmed H., 29.

But investigators are seeking to confirm his identity as the attacker—who had a history of petty crime but was not on a jihadist watch list—used seven aliases, anti-terror prosecutor Francois Molins told reporters.

“The method of the attacker, a knife attack at a train station, responded to a permanent call from the terrorist group Daesh,” Molins said, using another name for IS.

The jihadist group’s propaganda agency Amaq claimed the killer was one of its “soldiers”, while a source close to the investigation told AFP no solid evidence linked him to IS.

The attack in France’s second biggest city followed a string of stabbings around Europe claimed by or blamed on Islamist radicals.

The man killed two 20-year-old cousins from the eastern city of Lyon. One was studying in Marseille and the other was visiting her for the weekend.

Molins confirmed that witnesses heard the attacker shout “Allahu Akbar” (God is Greatest) as he lunged at the women with a 20-centimetre (eight-inch) knife before threatening soldiers, who shot him dead.

The attacker’s fingerprints showed he had had seven brushes with the law since 2005—most recently when he was arrested last week in Lyon.

He presented the Tunisian passport to police, saying he was divorced, used “hard drugs”, and had no fixed address.

The shoplifting charges were dropped for lack of evidence, and local authorities “were not able to take a decision to deport him,” Molins added. He was released on Saturday.

‘Barbaric act’

Police evacuated Marseille’s ornate Saint Charles station after the attack, temporarily halting all train traffic on some of France’s busiest lines.

“I was on the esplanade just in front of the station,” Melanie Petit, an 18-year-old student, told AFP. “I heard someone shout ‘Allahu Akbar’ and I saw a man who seemed to be dressed all in black.”

French President Emmanuel Macron tweeted Sunday that he was “deeply angered by this barbaric act”.

The attack comes as parliament prepares Tuesday to vote on a controversial anti-terror bill that transfers some of the exceptional powers granted to police under a 22-month-old state of emergency into national law.

France has been under a state of emergency since the IS gun and bomb attacks in Paris in November 2015—part of a string of jihadist assaults that have left more than 240 people dead over the past two years.

But rights groups warn that making parts of the state of emergency permanent would give police too much free rein in handling terrorism suspects.

Knives have been the weapon of choice in a string of smaller-scale attacks, in recent months, mainly targeting troops from the 7,000-strong Sentinelle anti-terror force set up to patrol the streets and vulnerable sites such as stations and tourist attractions.

In most cases, the attackers were shot dead at the start of their rampage, before they could kill others.

The Marseille attack came only days after IS released a recording of what it said was its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi urging his followers to strike their enemies in the West.

The French government has deployed troops and its air force to the Middle East and is a leading partner in the US-led international coalition fighting IS in Iraq and Syria.

DM: The man, who was aged between 30 and 35, has not been formally identified.

On Friday the attacker – who was a North African of either Algerian or Tunisian origin – was arrested in Lyon for shoplifting.

He had no papers on him and was in ‘an irregular situation in Europe’, so giving the authorities a chance to place him under judicial control.

NBC, BREAKING: “Death toll in Las Vegas mass shooting has risen to at least 58. 515 also injured, sheriff says”, 2 Oct 2017.

ABC.Net.Au, “Twitter shuts down 201 accounts linked to Russian propaganda operatives who posted to Facebook”, 29 Sept 2017:

Twitter has shut down hundreds of accounts that were tied to the same Russian operatives who posted thousands of political ads to Facebook during the 2016 US election.

The company said it found 22 accounts which were directly linked to the 450 Facebook accounts, found earlier this month.

It also found a further 179 accounts related or linked to those Twitter accounts.

None of these accounts had been registered as advertisers, and all of them had already been or were immediately suspended, most for violating spam rules.

Twitter said Russian media outlet RT — which has strong links to the Kremlin — spent at least $274,100 on advertisements on the platform in 2016.

The three accounts — @RT_com, @RT_America, and @ActualidadRT — also promoted 1,823 tweets the company says “definitely or potentially targeted” the US market.

Those ad buys alone topped the $100,000 that Facebook had linked to a Russian propaganda operation, a revelation that prompted calls from some Democrats for new disclosure rules for online political ads.

Although Twitter’s disclosures in briefings to US congressional staff and a public blog post were its most detailed to date on the issue, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee called the company’s statements “deeply disappointing”.

Senator Mark Warner, whose panel is investigating alleged Russian interference in the election, said Twitter officials had not answered many questions about the Russian use of the platform and that it was still subject to foreign manipulation.

Twitter has been criticised as being too lax in policing fake or abusive accounts.

Technology companies including Twitter, Facebook and Google were asked by intelligence committees earlier this week to testify at a public hearing on November 1 about alleged Russian interference.

The pressure on the companies reflects growing concern among politicians in both parties that social networks may have played a key role in Moscow’s attempts to spread disinformation and propaganda to sow political discord in the United States and help elect President Donald Trump.

Moscow denies any such activity and Mr Trump has denied any talk of collusion.

In front of building at 55 Savushkina Street in St Petersburg, Russia, where the Kremlin has a workforce of hundreds patrolling the internet as trolls. Youtube video

ABC.Net.Au, “Inside Russia’s Troll Factory: Controlling debate and stifling dissent in internet forums and social media”, 12 Aug 2015 -

Inside an anonymous building in St Petersburg, the Kremlin commands a workforce of hundreds that patrol the internet as trolls — assuming false identities online.

Their task is to control debate and stifle dissent in forums and on social media.

The department at the centre of this effort is officially known as the Internet Research Agency.

But its reputation has earned it another name by which it is widely known: the Troll Factory.

Andrei Soshnikov is the investigative journalist who has led the efforts to expose the Troll Factory.

“Generally, they produce lies in a 24-hour regime, seven days a week,” said Andrei Soshnikov, the investigative journalist who has led the efforts to expose the Troll Factory.

“In the morning, in the day, at night, something going on in world, or in Russia or St Petersburg, you will always find the comments from the Troll Factory.”

Soshnikov started monitoring the activities at the Internet Research Agency a few years ago, not long after he graduated from journalism school.

After his first reports were published, he hit the jackpot.

He was contacted by activist Luda Savchuk, who had been hired to work as a troll.

“I spent two months there,” Ms Savchuk told 7.30.

Photo: Luda Savchuck said she accepts the consequences that come with shining the light on Russia’s trolls. (7.30)

“I saw that this is really a big factory to produce paid comments, posts, pictures, video, any content we face on the internet is produced there.

“There are four floors there, very many departments dealing with social networks, LiveJournal (the popular Russian online forum), YouTube, forums with the websites of different cities.”

Working together, Ms Savchuk and Soshnikov published details of the Troll Factory’s operations.

At least 300 employees are believed to work in the building.

Ms Savchuk managed to capture the only video ever filmed inside — a few shaky seconds of trolls at work.

Ms Savchuk managed to capture the only video ever filmed inside — a few shaky seconds of trolls at work.

“News is sent to your computer with instructions about how it should be presented,” she said.

“It is not just objective information that is required, but in which tone it should be presented, to which conclusion one should drive a reader.”

When opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was shot dead within sight of the Kremlin in March, suspicion immediately fell on those with links to Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Ms Savchuk said the orders at the Troll Factory were handed down quickly.

“They were just told: ‘Nemtsov is killed. Everyone should urgently concentrate on this job. We shall write this and that’,” she said.

“On that day they were writing that it was a provocation against the authorities, that he was killed by ‘his own people’.”
Kremlin moves focus to social networks

After smothering political dissent, the Kremlin is now targeting social networks.

They have been viewed as a threat since anti-Putin protests seemingly sprung up out of nowhere in late 2011.

The driving force behind the brief opposition surge was social media.

Journalist Andrei Soldatov writes about Russia’s security agencies and their extensive online surveillance.

“You don’t need any kind of organisations to do these things,” he told 7.30.

Andrei Soshnikov is the investigative journalist who has led the efforts to expose the Troll Factory

“And that frightened the Kremlin in 2011.

“They still believe social networks [are] a major tool that might, if you have any kind of crisis, help people to send people in the thousands to the streets.”

Right now, the priority topic for the Kremlin’s trolls is Ukraine.

As the war in eastern Ukraine has dragged on, the Troll Factory has played a key role in the huge Russian propaganda campaign to demonise the Ukrainian government.

“In Ukraine, you don’t have people, you don’t have someone you can talk to,” Soldatov said summing up the stereotypes reinforced by the Kremlin’s trolls.

“You have only fascists.”

The Troll Factory’s actual address is 55 Savushkina Street, St Petersburg.

The building is surrounded by cameras, and employees do not appreciate being filmed.

Consequences for revealing secrecy behind trolls

“You have not just enemies, but someone who [is] completely unhuman.”

7.30 tried to speak with someone from the Internet Research Agency, but the request was denied.

All of the companies listed in the directory in the building’s foyer are fake.

Soshnikov said none of them could be found on St Petersburg’s corporate register.

The secrecy makes Ms Savchuk’s revelations about the work going on here all the more exceptional.

“I think Luda is a hero,” Soshnikov said.

“I had serious concerns about my safety and I still have them now.” - Luda Savchuk.

“Here in Russia is big atmosphere, strange atmosphere, of fear, of lies. And not everyone will act as a normal citizen, or patriot, in this situation.”

Ms Savchuk and others are prepared to fight back against the methodical re-establishment of the security state in Russia.

She accepts the consequences that come with shining the light on Russia’s trolls.

“I had serious concerns about my safety and I still have them now. Because the people who run this factory are quite serious,” she said.

But she has no regrets.

“I did this with my eyes open.”

The Occidental Observer, “Who Commits Murder in America?”, 19 Sept 2017:

- by Hubert Collins

Most Americans suspect that Blacks commit the majority of crime in this country. They are, in a word, correct. However, the government takes great strides to cover this up. From the federal on down to the city level, our rulers are loathe to release data on crime that includes racial breakdowns. Such data disrupts the preferred narratives about race in this country.

However, there are a handful of cities that do let the public see the numbers, and, no matter the city, it is Blacks who are running riot. Philadelphia is one those few forthright cities, so we will start there. To begin, here are the demographics for the city in 2016, according to the US Census:
44.2% Black
34.9% White
14.4% Hispanic
7.4% Asian
2.6% mixed
0.9% American Indian
0.2% Hawaiian/Pacific Islander

Here is the demographic makeup of arrestees for shootings, both fatal and non-fatal, that same year in Philadelphia:

     

For shootings, Blacks were just shy of doubling their share of the general population, with 80.3% of arrests. Whites were the opposite — just shy of halving their population share at 18.5% of arrests. Asians arrest rates, at 0.6%, are about one twelfth their share of the population.

Here are the same shooting arrests broken up between the uniquely clumsy categories “Latino” and “non-Latino.”

     

Hispanics/Latinos are quite close to being exactly proportional. They were 14.4% of the population at large, and 15.2% of arrests for shootings.

The numbers for murder arrests in 2015 reveal a similar pattern.
White: 18 total, or 17.1%
Black: 86 total, or 81.9%
Asian: 1 total, or less than 1%
Hispanic: 10 total, or 9.5%

The same goes for 2014:
White: 29 total, or 20.4%
Black: 103 total, or 72.5%
Asian: 10 total, or 7
Hispanic: 20 total, or 14.1%

The same pattern holds over the last 10 years of data that I looked at.

Conclusion: Blacks commit the overwhelming number of murders, with their arrest numbers being nearly double their share of the population.

Whites commit murder at about half the rate their share of the population would suggest.

Asians commit an infinitesimally small amount of murder relative to their population size.

Hispanics commit murders at rates more-or-less proportional to their population size.

Here is the demographic makeup of arrestees for shootings, both fatal and non-fatal, that same year in Philadelphia:

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The key difference is that we are Left Ethnonationalists, therefore Not imperialists, not supremacists, with no aim of genocide or its denial; thus, if our organizational meetings were infiltrated the only possible complaint would be that we wanted separatism and sovereignty; we do not want “them” to be part of our government and governing; do not want them imposed upon us; and if they refuse our wish for separatism and sovereignty, then they are revealed as the imperialists, supremacists, the exploitative, the slave masters.

Independent, 20 Sept 2017:

“Anti-fascist activist goes undercover with ‘alt right’ to expose movement’s rapid European expansion.”

Hope Not Hate report reveals how the group is breathing new life into once dormant far-right and racist groups around the world. A toxic mix of antisemitism, Islamophobia and sexism is revealed at the heart of the “alt-right” movement, following an investigation by an openly-gay anti-fascist activist that sheds new light on the far-right’s rising influence over political parties on both sides of the Atlantic.

Members of the group were caught discussing “gassing Jews” and killing their left-wing opponents after Hope Not Hate conducted a major study of white supremacists in the US and Europe.

The exposé reveals how the “alt-right” is breathing new life into once dormant far-right and racist groups around the world, uniting them under one international movement.

It uncovers the infiltration of the “alt-right” in the UK, with Sheffield-born blogger Paul Joseph Watson among those using their online following to reach audiences the traditional far-right has until now been unable to muster.

As a general principle The Independent avoids using the term “alt-right”, on the basis it is a euphemism employed to disguise racist aims.

The report says a second, “moderate” wing – dubbed the “alt-light” – has become increasingly influential on right-wing politics in Britain, pushing Ukip and others into ever-more hard-line territory.

Far right banned from using their favorite meme.

Authors of the study The International Alternative Right: From Charlottesville to the White House also claim to have found links between the hard-right network and the Trump administration.

Speaking of his experiences infiltrating the network of white supremacists, Patrik Hermansson said: “For almost a year I’ve been at the heart of a world of extreme racism, antisemitism, Holocaust denial, esoteric Nazi rituals and wild conspiracy theories.

“What I found was a movement that sometimes glorifies Nazi Germany, openly supports genocidal ideas and is unrelentingly racist, sexist and homophobic.”

Mr Hermansson said he first gained access to the movement after joining the far-right “think tank” London Forum, having claimed to have come to the UK as a disillusioned Swede curious about the “alt-right” and inspired by Brexit.

He was then introduced to other groups, including the Extremists Club and the Traditional Britain Group, which aims to “preserve the ancient traditions, peoples and beliefs” of the UK.

He said: “In this world, Holocaust denial and conspiracy theories are commonplace, so much so that a whole group exists to cater specifically for them.

“I spent endless mind-numbing hours at meetings of the [conspiracy theorist group] Keep Talking, listening to speakers deny climate change, debate whether 9/11 was a false flag attack or if an ill-defined ‘they’ sold birth certificates on the stock market. Trestle tables at the edge of the hall were adorned with Holocaust denial books.”

The label “alt-right” was first adopted by white supremacist Richard Spencer, but was brought to mainstream attention by individuals with a larger social media presence such as Milo Yiannopoulos and Mike Cernovich.

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