The FBI is now investigating a story that almost everyone intuitively knew was true from the start:

The Hill, ‘FBI probing far-right news sites: report’, 20 Mar 2017:

The FBI is investigating whether far-right news websites contributed to Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election, according to a new report.

The probe is focused on discovering whether Russian operatives used conservative outlets to help spread stories favoring now-President Trump, McClatchy said Monday.

McClatchy confirmed with two people familiar with the inquiry that the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division is driving the investigation.

The sources said Russian operatives seemingly strategically timed computer commands called “bots” to blitz social media with pro-Trump stories.  

The bots were used at times when Trump appeared struggling with 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, they continued.

McClatchy’s sources said the bots mainly created millions of Facebook and Twitter posts linking to articles on far-right websites including Breitbart News, InfoWars and the Kremlin-backed RT News and Sputnik News.

The sources added that some of the stories were false or contained a mixture of fact and fiction.

Federal investigators are now examining whether the far-right news organizations took any actions aiding Russian operatives, they said.

The bots could have amplified pro-Trump news on Facebook and Twitter, regardless of the outlets’ knowledge or involvement, the pair of sources noted.

“This may be one of the most impactful information operations in the history of intelligence,” one former U.S. intelligence official told McClatchy, speaking on the condition of anonymity due to the matter’s sensitivity.

FBI Director James Comey earlier Monday confirmed the Department of Justice (DOJ) is scrutinizing Russia’s meddling in the 2016 race, including any possible ties between Moscow and officials from Trump’s election campaign.

“As you know our practice is not to confirm the existence of an ongoing investigation,” he said during a House Intelligence Committee hearing.

“But in unusual circumstances where it is in the public interest, it may be appropriate to do so,” Comey added, noting the DOJ had authorized him to break bureau policy and publicly disclose the probe.

“This is one of those circumstances. I can promise you we will follow the facts wherever they lead.”

Comey added the FBI’s investigation began in late July and will include an assessment of whether any crimes were committed.

During the campaign itself, Louise Mensch had reported on basically the same thing. You can revisit that at Heatstreet, and I’ll just give you an exerpt from that:

Heatstreet, ‘How Russia’s Twitter Bots And Trolls Work With Donald Trump Campaign Accounts’, 20 Oct 2016:

If you’ve been following the Twitter fiasco that is the Donald Trump campaign, you will be aware of his association with the Alt-right and with Russia bot accounts.
 
Broadly speaking, Trump has two categories of support on Twitter. Alt-right trolls, and Russian bot accounts pretending to be patriotic Americans.*
 
In many cases, these two groups cross over. The altright contains actual humans, such as @prisonplanet, and many, many bots.
 
In this article I shall however examine the way in which Russian bots are created and used to follow and boost Trump online.
 
It is not that Donald Trump does not have widespread support. He does; even at his current polling lows, his support includes millions of Americans. It is, rather, that Trump’s supporters are incredibly unlikely to use Twitter.
 
Broadly speaking ,Trump’s real supporters aren’t on Twitter – and Trump’s Twitter supporters aren’t real.

[...]

Three such bots that I videoed in the act of using this method were @Commander6080, @Sbragusa, and @jamesdgriffin. All have profiles that pretend to be Americans and to live in the USA.
 
How might this affect a twitter trend? What is the point of it? One scientist theorized as follows. It is a “fake trend” theory called “A Handoff”:

Let’s say you had a hashtag you wanted to get trending. You have a thousand bots (or Russian Trolls) and a popular account like Ricky Vaughn. You have the bots start using the hashtag, they start flooding twitter until it gets a high count (but not in the top 20 trends) then have a real person,  Ricky Vaughn, start pitching the hashtag to his followers. Here is where the window of timing kicks in: within minutes, Ricky Vaughn can have something trending, but before he gets the hashtag to the top 15 you have almost all of the bots automatically delete their tweets with the hashtags. You‘ve now started “a trend” quickly and have had it associated with “Ricky Vaughn” and not a 1,000 odd bots or Russian trolls.

[...]

This whole arrangement of social media manipulation is part of the communication operations side of the modern form of Russian Active Measures. The most remarkable thing about this arrangement is how it is tactically innovative and well-timed to exploit a particular weakness in American society specifically, but it is strategically unsophisticated because Russian commanders have also permanently ruined their own country’s reputation among the international journalist community and among most people on social media.

It’s highly abnormal for an entire country to transparently do something like that. Why would they choose to so carelessly and openly abandon even the appearance of any kind of ‘normality’ on national level?

There are a few reasons as to why they would have chosen to behave this way, but all of them seem to be capable of being summarised like this: Russian commanders may have been willing to sacrifice their country’s perceived journalistic integrity in the eyes of most of the world, because they’ve already given up on the idea that they could ever create a narrative that could appeal to a broad audience. Instead, Russia is seeking to cultivate a very particular audience in Europe and North America (excluding the United Kingdom which they seem to be abandoning). They are seeking to cultivate that roughly 20% of the population which is somewhere vaguely in the nationalistic spectrum and is disillusioned about the political situation in their country, but also lacks grounding and experience in how the world actually works. Russian commanders want to shape the media experience through which those people will come to terms with the world around them, and thus, create a long-term ‘following’, even if those followers are not necessarily aware of what it is that they are following.

The utility of this is clear. 20% of a population is enough to seriously impact the operation of political institutions in western democracies which operate in a pluralistic mode. Russian journalism is not seeking to be liked by everyone, or even trusted. Russia just wants 20% of any given European population to be responsive to their input because that is the bare minimum that they need.

Euractiv, “Green NGOs blame Monsanto for ‘buying science’ to save glyphosate”, 24 March 2017:

The authors of the report claim that between 2012 and 2016, the companies sponsored a series of review articles published in scientific journals, all of which conclude that glyphosate and its commercial formulations are not carcinogenic. [Mike Mozart/Flickr]

A new report accuses glyphosate producers of “buying science” in order to secure the substance’s position in the EU market.

According to the Buying Science report published by GLOBAL 2000 (Friends of the Earth Austria member of Pesticide Action Network-PAN) with the support of Avaaz, BUND, Campact, CEO, GMWatch, (PAN) Europe, PAN Germany, and Umweltinstitut München, Monsanto and other glyphosate manufacturers allegedly “distorted scientific evidence” on the public health impacts of the pesticide.

The authors of the report claim that, between 2012 and 2016, the companies sponsored a series of review articles published in scientific journals, all of which conclude that glyphosate and its commercial formulations are not carcinogenic.

Scandalous

“Glyphosate producers have used every trick in the book to enable regulatory authorities around the world to play down the alarming health effects of glyphosate. The fact that the agencies accepted their ‘assistance’ is nothing less than scandalous,” insisted Helmut Burtscher, one of the study’s authors.

Earlier this month (15 March), the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) concluded that glyphosate weedkiller should not be classified as a carcinogen.

Environmentalist NGOs reacted strongly, with Greenpeace saying that the ECHA “sweeps glyphosate cancer evidence under the carpet”.

Glyphosate is not carcinogenic, EU agency says.

The European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) said today (15 March) that much-discussed glyphosate weedkiller should not be classified as a carcinogen, triggering a strong response from environmentalist NGOs.

The Health and Environment Alliance (HEAL) went further, claiming that the decision contradicted the world’s most authoritative cancer research agency, the World Health Organisation’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), which classified glyphosate as a “probable carcinogen” in 2015.

Scientific flaws

The NGOs claim that these reviews proving glyphosate is safe contain “fundamental scientific flaws spanning from apparently calculated omissions and the introduction of irrelevant data to the violation of OECD guidance for the evaluation of rodent cancer studies”.

“The reviews also consistently assign greater weight to unpublished industry studies than to studies that were peer-reviewed and published in scientific journals,” the report noted.

The report stressed that regulatory authorities like Germany’s Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR), the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have all drawn on such review articles, which have concluded that glyphosate was not carcinogenic, have actually referred to these industry-sponsored review articles.

“In contrast, IARC refused to consider the unpublished industry studies summarised in industry-sponsored reviews in its assessment of glyphosate, stating that the data presented therein were insufficient and important details were lacking […] IARC generally does not accept unpublished scientific evidence,” the authors of the report concluded.

Europe poised for total ban on bee-harming pesticides.

The world’s most widely used insecticides would be banned from all fields across Europe under draft regulations from the European Commission, seen by EURACTIV’s partner The Guardian.

Positions

European Commission Spokesperson Enrico Brivio recently told EURACTIV that the EU executive “took notice” of ECHA’s opinion, which was “based on scientific evidence”.

“The submission of the final opinion to the Commission is expected before the summer break […] After submission of the final opinion, the Commission Services will re-start their discussions with the member states as regards the approval of glyphosate as an active substance in Plant Protection Products (PPPs).”

“A decision has to be taken within 6 months of receipt of the RAC Opinion from ECHA, or by the end of 2017 – at the latest,” he added.

An EFSA spokesperson said, after this article was published, that “EFSA is the first to defend the importance of reliable science as it forms the basis of all our risk assessments”, adding “from an initial glance at the “Purchased Science” report, it is clear that the majority of mentioned studies were published after EFSA had completed its assessment of glyphosate. In other words, they did not play any role in the EFSA assessment of glyphosate”.

“There are two scientific reviews mentioned in the report (Williams et al 2000, Kier and Kirkland 2013) that were among the 700 references considered in the EU assessment for glyphosate. EFSA and EU member states rely primarily on the original studies and the underlying raw data which they check themselves. The weight given to reviews of scientific studies (like the ones mentioned in the report) is limited,” they added.

“There are no grounds to suggest that reviews of scientific studies, sponsored directly or indirectly by industry, improperly influenced the EU risk assessment for glyphosate,” the spokesperson concluded.

Background

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) said in November 2015 that glyphosate was unlikely to cause cancer in humans and proposed higher limits on the amount of residue of the weedkiller deemed safe for humans to consume.

The EFSA advises EU policymakers and its conclusion were expected to pave the way for the 28-member European Union to renew approval for glyphosate, which was brought into use by Monsanto in the 1970s and is used in its top selling product Roundup as well as in many other herbicides around the world.

Environmental groups have been calling for a ban after the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), part of the World Health Organisation, said in March 2015 that glyphosate was “probably carcinogenic to humans”.

A campaign group said that 1.4 million people had signed a petition calling on the European Union to suspend glyphosate approval pending further assessment.

The EFSA said it had carried out a thorough analysis and taken account of the IARC’s findings. Greenpeace, for its part, called the EFSA’s report “a whitewash”.

The arrest of a second Jewish man for the wave of “anti-Jewish hate crimes” against Jewish Community Centers (JCC) in the U.S. has left Jewish supremacist organizations and individuals scrambling to explain why the single greatest spree of “anti-Semitic” incidents in recent history originated in Israel.

According to a report in the Jerusalem Post, the second arrest is that of the father of the 18-year-old Jew arrested earlier for over 100 bomb threats to JCCs in the U.S. and elsewhere.

The father’s detention was extended until March 30, on charges that he was “involved in most of the same crimes and many of the threatening telephone calls.”

The suspect’s mother was also questioned, as the unusually large antenna and other extraordinary hardware used by her husband and son in the conspiracy were so unusual that it is extremely unlikely that she would not have been aware of what was going on.

According to a report by the Religion News Service’s Lauren Markoe, as published in the Colorado Gazette, “Jews worldwide uttered a collective gasp” when they found out that the threats to “more than 135 Jewish institutions across North America is Jewish himself.”

The “collective gasp” turned out, however, to be just another outburst of anti-Gentile hatred, as summed up by the article’s quote from Deborah Lipstadt, “who studies anti-Semitism at Emory University,” who said that she didn’t “know if it would be better if we found out if it was a right-wing white Supremacist, Neo Nazi, or follower of ISIS.”

The Gazette report went on to say that “now many worry that the suspect’s identity will lend credence to anti-Semites’ common claim that Jews exaggerate threats and crimes against them.”

This is of course a very valid “worry”—especially because there is a long record of fake hate crimes being perpetrated by Jews.

Fake Jewish hate crimes go back decades: For example, as early as 1963, five Jews were arrested in New York City while painting swastikas on the front of the Israeli Consulate-General building, a building which also housed the Israeli mission to the United Nations.

Source: TNO, 24 March 2017

Ms. Iqra Khalid, a Muslim, pushes through anti-Islamophobia motion.

Breitbart, “Canadian Parliament Passes Controversial Islamophobia Motion”, 24 March 2017:

The Canadian House of Commons has passed motion M103 which singles out the criticism of Islam as a form of “Islamophobia”. Critics condemn it as an attack on free speech.

Motion M103 was tabled by Iqra Khalid, a Muslim member of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party. It states the government must “condemn Islamophobia and all forms of systemic racism and religious discrimination”, was taken to vote on Thursday evening where a total of 201 MPs voted for it and only 91 voted against, Canadian broadcaster Global News reports.

The text of the motion does not clarify what constitutes “Islamophobia” and has led many to speculate what that may mean in the future, with some critics fearing it could lead to Shariah law courts. This concern has led to the circulation of an anti-Shariah petition on the Parliament of Canada website, which has so far been signed by over 24,000 people.

Ms. Khalid, who was born in Pakistan and moved to the UK and then to Canada, said the definition of Islamophobia was: “The irrational hate of Muslims that leads to discrimination.”

When Conservatives asked her to remove Islamophobia from the motion, she said: “I will not do so, any more than I would speak to the Holocaust and not mention that the overwhelming majority of victims were six million followers of the Jewish faith and that anti-Semitism was the root cause of the Holocaust.”

Another part of the bill that has stirred controversy is the passage that asks the government to “recognise the need to quell the increasing public climate of hate and fear”. It is currently unknown what measures the government will take to “quell” “hate and fear” as the motion is not classified as a law and has no effect on current criminal law.

The Conservative Party of Canada are currently holding leadership elections and many of the candidates have come out against M103 including one of the frontrunners, Quebecer Maxime Bernier. Mr. Bernier, a conservative with libertarian free market leanings, said he voted against the bill tweeting: “Free speech is the most fundamental right we have. I am opposed to #m103. Canadians should be treated equally regardless of religion.”

        Visigrad Post, “Orbán: Brussels Must be Halted, and Hungary Must Stand Up Against International Capital”, 24 March 2017:

Hungary – Prime Minister Viktor Orbán called March 15 an “indisputable proof” of the Hungarian nation’s past, present and future, at a commemoration of the 1848-49 revolution and freedom fight on Wednesday, March 15.

Speaking in front of the National Museum, the prime minister said that European nations are in a “state of revolt”, with the “winds of 48 blowing again on the continent”. Over the past years European nations once again revolted against “the hypocritical alliance of the Brussels bureaucrats, the liberal international media and the insatiable global capital,” Orbán said.

First the British, then the Americans rebelled, to be followed by others this year, he added. Orbán stressed the need for Brussels to take off the “masks of hypocrisy”, and opt for straight speech and an open discussion of the future.

Orbán emphasised that the resettlement of illegal migrants must be prevented, the network financed from foreign funds made transparent, and the right to regulate taxes, wages and utility prices kept in national competence.

Orbán called March 15 an “indisputable proof” of the Hungarian nation’s past, present and future. “We, living in the Carpathian Basin, at the buffer zone of cultures, empires and civilisations, can be proud of the greatest triumph of all, winning all wars for the survival of our homeland, our nation,” he said.

He said 1848 had become a “moral compass” for the nation, one that shows who is “loyal, patriotic, dedicated and brave” on the one hand, and exposes “pettiness, perfidy and efforts to kill dreams and destroy the nation” on the other. The prime minister insisted that national unity should be retained and cemented day by day.

“But what should we do with those who want unrest and division rather than peace and unity . whose only pleasure lies in spoiling the holiday of others,” he asked, referring to a group whistling during his speech. “It would be easy to mock them but we should not do that,” he said adding that Hungarians should “stand their ground on the horizon of building the nation rather than in the skirmishes of petty parties.”

“From the horizon of the Hungarian nation, one can choose the road that leads us to the wide gate of greatness or the one that leads to the swamp of hatred,” he said.

Article originally published at Daily News Hungary.

A Jewish man based in Israel has been arrested in connection with the “spate of anti-Jewish hate crimes” consisting of telephone and bomb threats against Jewish community centers across the U.S.—incidents which were used by Jewish organizations to claim an “increase in anti-Semitism” of late.

New York Times, “Jewish Center Bomb Threat Suspect Is Arrested in Israel”, 23 Mar 2017:

The teenager accused of making bomb threats against Jewish community centers hid his face before the start of a court hearing in Israel. His name has not been released. Credit Baz Ratner/Reuters

JERUSALEM — A monthslong wave of bomb threats against Jewish institutions in the United States that prompted evacuations, heightened security and fears of rising anti-Semitism gave way to an unexpected twist on Thursday. The person responsible for many of the threats, law enforcement officials said, was half a world away, in Israel, a Jewish teenager.

An intensive investigation spanning multiple countries culminated on Thursday in the arrest of the 18-year-old suspect, who holds dual Israeli and American citizenship, and his father. The teenager’s lawyer said he had a brain tumor that could affect his behavior.

The surge in threats over the past few months — well over 100 sent to Jewish community centers, schools and museums since the start of the year — coincided with an increase in hate crimes against a number of groups, from scrawled swastikas to homicides, feeding worries about a new era of bigotry. American and Israeli officials refused to say how many of those threats the suspect was accused of making. And some recent anti-Semitic acts were apparently committed by others, like threats against Jewish centers for which a Missouri man was charged, and the vandalizing of Jewish cemeteries.

But officials made it clear that they considered the teenager, who lived in the Ashkelon area of southern Israel, to be the primary source of the threats, though they did not offer a motive. “This is the guy we are talking about,” an Israeli police spokesman, Micky Rosenfeld, said.

The suspect made threats to sites in Australia and New Zealand, as well as in the United States, and to at least one commercial airline flight, prompting an emergency landing, Mr. Rosenfeld said.

A judge ordered the suspect, who has not been charged, held until at least March 30 and ordered a medical examination. His father was ordered held for eight days, on suspicion that he might have been aware of the threats, or even been involved.

Haaretz, “Israeli Cybercrime Police Arrest Israeli-American Teen for ‘Hundreds’ of Bomb Threats Against Jewish Centers Worldwide “, 23 Mar 2017:

Arrest of Jewish teen partly based on FBI information ■ Bitcoin account discovered on computer, leading to suspicions payment involved in some calls ■ Defense attorney: Medical condition may have affected teen’s cognitive functioning.

READ MORE...

Reuters, “Polish PM draws link between London attack and EU migrant policy”, 23 Mar 2017:

Poland’s prime minister drew a link on Thursday between an attack in London targeting the British parliament and the European Union’s migrant policy, saying the assault vindicated Warsaw’s refusal to take in refugees.

Poland’s Prime Minister Beata Szydlo holds a news conference at the end of a European Union leaders summit in Brussels, Belgium, March 10, 2017. REUTERS/Yves Herman

Five people, including the attacker, were killed and about 40 injured on Wednesday after a car ploughed into pedestrians near the British parliament. Police believe the attack was “Islamist-related”, but have given no details about the attacker, who they say was acting alone.

Poland’s right-wing, eurosceptic government has refused to accept any of the 6,200 migrants allocated to it under the European Union’s quota scheme that is designed to share the burden of taking in the large numbers of migrants and refugees who have come to Europe over the past two years.

“I hear in Europe very often: do not connect the migration policy with terrorism, but it is impossible not to connect them,” Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo told private broadcaster TVN24.

Earlier this week the EU’s migration commissioner, Dimitris Avramopoulos, on a visit to Warsaw, warned member states against failing to host refugees to help alleviate pressure on frontline states bearing the brunt of arrivals across the Mediterranean.

“The commissioner should concentrate on what to do to avoid such acts as yesterday in London ... Poland will not succumb to blackmail such as that expressed by the commissioner,” Szydlo said.

“The commissioner is coming to Warsaw and trying to tell us: you have to do what the EU decided, you have to take these migrants .... Two days later another terrorist attack in London occurs,” she said.

The leader of Szydlo’s ruling Law and Justice party (PiS), Jaroslaw Kaczynski, said back in 2015 that refugees could bring diseases and parasites to Poland, which is staunchly Roman Catholic and has very few Muslim immigrants.

The migrant issue is just one of several over which Poland is at odds with the EU.

Also on Thursday Szydlo said Poland might not accept a declaration EU leaders are due to endorse in Rome this month that will chart the bloc’s course after Britain leaves unless it addresses issues Warsaw considers crucial.

Nazis dismantling Polish border control.

Breitbart, “EU Says They Can Force All Members, Including Poland, to Take Migrants”, 21 March 2017:

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — The European Union’s commissioner for migration says there are ways to make all EU members states comply with the program of relocation of migrants among them.

Dimitris Avramopoulos made the statement Tuesday in Warsaw, where he is visiting the growing European border guard agency, Frontex.

Poland is refusing to accept migrants, arguing they are chiefly economic migrants, not war refugees, and may potentially pose a threat.

The relocation plan is intended to ease the pressure on countries that have taken the brunt of the migrant wave: Italy and Greece.

Without naming Poland, Avramopoulos said the EU has the “tools, the means and the power” to convince all members to comply and will make an assessment of response by the end of September. He mentioned no sanctions.

  Avramopoulos

Dimitris Avramopoulos:

Since 1 November 2014 he is serving as EU Commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship in the Juncker Commission.

Avramopoulos has a friendly relation with the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan since they were Mayors of Athens and Istanbul respectively. He is deemed one of the main proponents of Greek-Turkish rapprochement.