ET Williams

The Doctor of Common Sense

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Russians Paid for BLM Ads on Facebook; Targeted Ferguson and Baltimore

Zuckerberg needs to be investigated, not Russia

 

Exclusive: Russian-bought Black Lives Matter ad on Facebook targeted Baltimore and Ferguson

At least one of the Facebook ads bought by Russians during the 2016 presidential campaign referenced Black Lives Matter and was specifically targeted to reach audiences in Ferguson, Missouri and Baltimore, sources with knowledge of the ads told CNN.

Ferguson and Baltimore had gained widespread attention for the large and violent protests over police shootings of black men. The decision to target the ad in those two cities offers the first look at how accounts linked to the Russian government-affiliated troll farm known as the Internet Research Agency used geographically targeted advertising to sow political chaos in the United States, the sources said.

Facebook has previously said that roughly one-quarter of the 3,000 ads bought by the agency were geographically targeted, but it has not revealed any specific locations. Facebook has also not revealed which demographic groups and interest groups were targeted by the ads.

The Black Lives Matter ad appeared on Facebook at some point in late 2015 or early 2016, the sources said. The sources said it appears the ad was meant to appear both as supporting Black Lives Matter but also could be seen as portraying the group as threatening to some residents of Baltimore and Ferguson.

New descriptions of the Russian-bought ads shared with CNN suggest that the apparent goal of the Russian buyers was to amplify political discord and fuel an atmosphere of incivility and chaos, though not necessarily to promote one candidate or cause over another. Facebook’s review of Russian efforts on its platform focused on a timeframe from June 2015 to May 2017.

These ranged from posts promoting Black Lives Matter to posts promoting gun rights and the Second Amendment to posts warning about what they said was the threat undocumented immigrants posed to American democracy. Beyond the election, Russians have sought to raise questions about western democracies.

“This is consistent with the overall goal of creating discord inside the body politic here in the United States, and really across the West,” Steve Hall, the former CIA officer and CNN National Security Analyst, said. “It shows they the level of sophistication of their targeting. They are able to sow discord in a very granular nature, target certain communities and link them up with certain issues.”

The Internet Research Agency is a shadowy agency that U.S. military intelligence has described as “a state-funded organization that blogs and tweets on behalf of the Kremlin.” A senior Kremlin spokesman said last week that Russia did not buy ads on Facebook to influence the election.

The ads were bought through Facebook’s self-service ad model, which allows buyers to target their ads to users based on several criteria, including geographic location, demographic categories and specific interests.

Senator Mark Warner, the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Tuesday that the “million-dollar question” about the Facebook ads centered on how the Russians knew whom to target.

“Did they know this just by following political news in America? Did they geo-target both geography and by demographics in ways that at least at first blush appear pretty sophisticated? These are the kind of questions that we need to get answered and that’s why we need them in a public hearing,” Warner said.

The targeting issue is also important because, if it appears that the targeting was particularly sophisticated, questions may be raised about how the Russians knew where to direct their ads. Further, information about the targeting could help investigators determine whether or not there was collusion between these ad buyers and the Trump campaign.

Republican Sen. Richard Burr, the chairman of the committee, said Tuesday that there’s “no evidence yet” that Russians and Trump officials colluded on the Facebook ads, but said it’s an area the committee continues to investigate.

The Black Lives Matter ad targeted toward Baltimore and Ferguson, which sources discussed with CNN on the condition of anonymity, was one of a small handful of ads presented to congress earlier this month. Facebook has said that it will hand over detailed records of all 3,000 ads to congress in a matter of days. CNN has not seen the ad but the targeted was described by the sources.

Facebook has already handed over copies of the ads and information about the relevant accounts to Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is conducting an investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

Facebook did not comment for this story but did point to a statement from Facebook’s chief security officer, Alex Stamos, who said earlier this month that “the vast majority of ads run by these accounts didn’t specifically reference the U.S. presidential election, voting or a particular candidate.”

“Rather,” Stamos said, “the ads and accounts appeared to focus on amplifying divisive social and political messages across the ideological spectrum — touching on topics from LGBT matters to race issues to immigration to gun rights.”

Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said this week that the aim of the ad-buyers “was to sow chaos.”

“In many cases, it was more about voter suppression rather than increasing turnout,” he told reporters.

The Senate Intelligence Committee will also hear from Twitter on Thursday about how foreign nationals may have used its ad service to influence the 2016 election. Twitter has declined to shed any light so far on what information it plans to give to Congress.

http://money.cnn.com/2017/09/27/media/facebook-black-lives-matter-targeting/index.html

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‘Fake News’ Writer Paul Horner Found Dead at 38

PHOENIX (AP) — A leading purveyor of fake news in the 2016 presidential election has died outside Phoenix at the age of 38.

Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Mark Casey said Tuesday authorities discovered Paul Horner dead in his bed on Sept. 18.

Casey said the Maricopa County medical examiner performed an autopsy which showed there were no signs of foul play. He said Horner had a history of prescription drug abuse and that “evidence at the scene suggested this could be an accidental overdose.”

Horner was known for writing false stories and disseminating internet hoaxes that often went viral on Facebook and hoodwinked thousands of people.

They included a story falsely claiming President Barack Obama was gay and a radical Muslim, and another saying protesters were being paid thousands of dollars to demonstrate at Donald Trump’s campaign rallies.

Horner took on greater prominence during the presidential election when false stories were widely shared on social media during the race between Trump and Hillary Clinton.

In an interview with The Washington Post in 2016, Horner said he thought Trump won the White House because of him. Horner said Trump’s supporters didn’t fact-check his stories before posting them.

J.J., Horner’s brother, said Paul considered his work satire and explained that his brother’s unique eye for hoaxes and hypocrisy at a young age later worked as clickbait in the internet world.

“So I think that was a lot of the genius behind a lot of his work was pushing ideas that either people wanted to believe or thought was possible,” J.J. said.

Casey said toxicology reports from the medical examiner’s office are still pending. The case will remain open until those results are known and a cause of death is finalized.

J.J. Horner said they grew up in Minnesota before moving to Arizona as teenagers. He said his brother was drawing and making political cartoons at a very young age and took an interest in politics.

Horner said while his brother was pigeonholed as a Trump supporter after a member of the Trump family shared one of his stories, he was always transparent about his views and it was obvious that he wasn’t.

“I think he just wanted people to just think for themselves and be credible for their actions,” J.J. Horner said. “Read more; get more involved instead of just blindly sharing things.”

https://apnews.com/dc0728173537459b9a1e38009dd5c4b5/Famous-fake-news-writer-found-dead-outside-Phoenix

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Jared ‘the Cuck’ Kushner is Registered to Vote as a Woman

Wish we could say the same

Washington (CNN)Jared Kushner, senior adviser and son-in-law to President Donald Trump, apparently registered to vote as a female, according to his publicly accessible 2009 New York state voter information.

The records held by the New York State Board of Elections show Jared Corey Kushner is registered to vote as a female, Wired first reported.
The White House declined to comment on the story.
Attorney: Kushner used private email account to talk to WH officials

Attorney: Kushner used private email account to talk to WH officials
Kushner, who is married to Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump, has been under fire lately for occasionally using a private email account for correspondence with fellow administration officials, his lawyer, Abbe Lowell, confirmed to CNN on Sunday.
In January, Trump said 3 to 5 million people voted illegally — about the same margin Hillary Clinton won the national popular vote by. In February, he said thousands of people had been bused to New Hampshire from Massachusetts to vote illegally in the swing state.
None of those claims have been proven. But earlier this month, Trump’s “Election Integrity” commission met in New Hampshire to look for evidence.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/27/politics/jared-kushner-voter-registration-female/index.html

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Cannibal Couple Stalked Victims On Dating Site

Having tits and ass for dinner after luring women from dating site
LURED TO THEIR DEATHS

‘Cannibal couple hunted for victims on dating sites before drugging, butchering and eating them’

 

A SUSPECTED cannibal couple lured victims using dating sites before drugging, butchering and eating them, it has been claimed.

Dmitry Baksheev, 35, and his wife Natalia, 42, have reportedly confessed to killing at least 30 people in Russia over two decades.

Cops fear Natalia may have also fed human meat to student pilots in the Krasnodar military academy where she worked as a nurse.

The couple were arrested after the dismembered remains of a young woman were found in the academy next to a bucket filled with body parts.

Dmitry admitted the grim killing and boasted about multiple other murders after a phone was found with pictures of him allegedly posing for selfies with dead bodies.

Investigators are seeking to verify the claims after seven bags of body parts were found in their fridge and freezer.

A jar with pickled human remains and 19 slices of skin were also discovered in the macabre flat.

Many cans with steamed meat were found in their kitchen, a source told Komsomolskaya Pravda.

Police fear Baksheev set up meetings with the victims after chatting to them on dating sites.

His wife is reported to have been shown the faces of missing women in southern Russia and identified dozens who she claimed were their victims.

A police source said: “Going through the photographs, the woman has recognised more than 30 victims that they killed and eaten together with her husband.

“A psychologist was sent from Nizhny Novgorod to make her talk.”

Separate reports say Natalia was checked by a psychiatric hospital and found to be “mentally healthy”.

“In their home, many mobile phones of their victims were found, and also video lessons on how to cook meals from human meat,” said the police source.

“This woman had been working in the military academy as a nurse and supposedly she was sharing these cans of steamed human meat with student pilots.”

But so far police have concrete evidence of only two women who were allegedly killed and cannibalised, it is understood.

Baksheev was detained after a man found his mobile in the street and found images of him posing for selfies with a woman’s body parts.

“He took a selfie with the hand in his mouth, at the same time he put the fingers of the dead hand into his nose,” said a police report.

“Then he cut one finger with a knife.”

He told interrogators he began his macabre reign of terror in 1999.

One sickening image appears to show a head being served as Christmas dinner surrounded by mandarins.

A police source added: “The earliest date of their culinary experiment is 28 December 1999 – the date on one of the photographs.

“We can see a cooked human head at the big plate surrounded by mandarins.

“They put olives into the eyes and attached a lemon to the nose.”

A police search found body parts in a rubbish container near the hostel where the pair lived and a red-haired woman’s head in a metal bucket, with human skin nearby.

More human remains were found in a cellar.

Baksheev confessed to throwing away the body parts, telling police: “I did a stupid thing.”

The woman was identified as Elena B, who lived in the same military academy where the alleged cannibal couple resided.

It is believed she was killed in a forest nearby and her dismembered remains were carried to his home by Baksheev in a backpack.

Both suspects have been detained pending further investigations.

A local shopkeeper remembers him coming to top up his mobile and walking away with blood dripping from a cooler bag he was carrying.

Road worker Roman Khomyakov found Baksheev’s Samsung mobile phone and noticed the hideous photographs.

“We were working near Gastello street, putting asphalt on the road, when I found the phone,” he said.

“I opened the photo album and looked only at two pictures.

“At first I did not even understand what was there, it looked like a head and a hand. I thought pictures were real.”

Baksheev reportedly came looking for the phone.

“The man looked homeless. He said: ‘I lost my phone.’

“I recognised him from the pictures in the phone. So I did not return the phone, we said we knew nothing. He left.

“Soon a road police car came passed, and I gave them the mobile phone. I said: ‘It’s your job, sort it out’.”

Police say Baksheev was an orphan from Siberia who was adopted by a childless couple.

He was in his teens when his mother Svetlana died of cancer – and his adoptive father threw him out of the family home even though he was underage.

Some reports say Natalia took him in and married him when he was 18.

Others say that she had other partners and the pair did not wed until four years ago.

His father – who was not named – said: “Before moving out of our flat he set fire to his room.”

He said: “He was convicted four times for stealing things.

“He took loans and gave my name as a trustee. I had to switch off my phone because banks kept calling me.

“I had tried to help him, I found jobs for him several times but what could I do?

“It is useless talking to him. His eyes are made of glass.

“He is looking through your body and does not listen.”

Natalia Baksheeva, who is seven years older than her husband, came to live in Krasnodar from Omutinsk town in Kirov region.

Cops uncovered “video lessons for cannibals” at their homes, according to Livekuban.ru.

The couple are being held in Krasnodar as cops investigate.

 

‘Cannibal couple hunted for victims on dating sites before drugging, butchering and eating them’

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YeeHaw! Roy Moore Pulls Out A Gun At His Rally

He’s a fighter and a gunslinger

Roy Moore pulls out gun while speaking at rally

Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore pulled out a handgun during a campaign rally Monday night.

During the rally — which came just hours ahead of the Republican primary runoff Tuesday — Moore said he dealt with nearly three months of negative ads, ABC News reported.

“Ads that were completely false. That I don’t believe in the Second Amendment,” Moore, a former state Supreme Court chief justice, said.

He then turned and pulled out a handgun, while saying: “I believe in the Second Amendment.”

The comment was met with cheers from the audience.

Moore headed into Election Day leading in polls over Sen. Luther Strange (R-Ala.), who has the backing of President Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

Strange’s allies had poured nearly $11 million into the race as of Friday, and Strange’s campaign organization has outspent Moore by more than 300 percent.

The winner of the Tuesday runoff election will face Democrat Doug Jones in the December general election as Republican try to keep the seat vacated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Trump on Monday said that if Alabama voters elected Moore, Democrats would win the general election for the seat.

Conservatives figures like 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin and former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon have backed Moore as an anti-establishment Republican.

http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/352410-roy-moore-pulls-out-gun-while-speaking-at-rall

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Trump’s Advisors Use Private Servers

Sadly, they have a lot more influence than Sarah Palin or even the Hildabeast. What are they leaking?

The Brazenness of Trump’s White House Staff Using Private Email

How could six senior presidential aides mimic the strategy for which Trump lacerated Hillary Clinton? Only if they believe they are as immune to the usual rules as he is.

Late Sunday night, Josh Dawsey of Politico dropped a story that, in any other administration, would have been cause for concern but hardly surprise.

“Presidential son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner has corresponded with other administration officials about White House matters through a private email account set up during the transition last December,” Dawsey wrote. “Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, set up their private family domain late last year before moving to Washington from New York, according to people with knowledge of events as well as publicly available internet registration records.”

On Monday, Newsweek reported that Ivanka Trump had also used the domain to communicate with at least one government official, Small Business Administration chief Linda McMahon.* By Monday night, The New York Times had reported that at least six officials, including former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, former strategist Steve Bannon, and aides Stephen Miller and Gary Cohn, had used personal accounts for at least some official business.

Administration officials conducting business on personal accounts raises concerns because it suggests some intention to skirt public-records laws and conceal things from the public. While troubling, this is hardly unusual. Sarah Palin was busted for using one. So were officials in the George W. Bush administration. Lisa Jackson, who ran the Environmental Protection Agency under Barack Obama, used an alias for her email.

Of course, the most famous example of someone using a personal email is Hillary Clinton. The case of the Javanka domain is brazen for its mimickry of Clinton’s actions at the State Department, right down to the use of a domain specifically for the family. The only way it could be more slapstick would be if Kushner and Trump also used BleachBit.

There are significant ways the Kushner-Ivanka domain differs from Clinton’s. Neither of them is a Cabinet secretary. (Trump, despite her title as special assistant to the president, says she doesn’t even want to get involved in politics.) Neither of them is running for office (at the moment). The scale of their usage pales in comparison to Clinton’s, and there’s no indication that they deleted any emails. Nor is there any indication that classified information was sent in the emails.

Yet it takes a special sort of hypocrisy, or dark sense of humor, or lack of self-awareness for Trump’s daughter and son-in-law to do this after watching a race in which Donald Trump campaigned for, and arguably won, the presidency because of Clinton’s imprudent decision to use the private email domain. She was cleared by the FBI and the Justice Department of any crimes, though then-FBI Director James Comey called her “extremely careless” with classified information. It was the political sin of looking like she had something to hide, and was trying hard to hide it, that stuck to Clinton. Somehow, Kushner and Trump still decided to set up their own family domain, and no one convinced them it was a bad idea.
This is only the latest example of the Trump administration committing the very sins for which it crucified its political opponents. Trump assailed Barack Obama for taking vacations and playing golf too frequently; Trump vacations, and he plays golf more often than Obama. Trump assailed Obama for laying down red lines and not enforcing them; Trump keeps doing the same. Trump accused Obama of dividing the nation and of distancing America from its closest allies; Trump is a virtuosic divider, and frequently at odds with allied leaders. Trump vigorously attacked Clinton for having a private email account; a handful of his top advisers did the same.If everyone does it, why did the email situation stick to Clinton so badly? In part because the public was already primed to view Clinton as ethically dubious. It was an impression fed by her husband’s scandal-plagued tenure as president as well as things like her speeches to Goldman Sachs, and encouraged by a cottage industry created for that purpose. Fairly or unfairly, the email server made for the perfect attack, aided, as my colleague James Fallows recently argued, by a press corps only too eager to amplify it.

So why doesn’t it stick to Trump? After all, he has his own history of ethical and legal shortcomings, one that is more robust and more concretely documented than anything in Clinton’s record. But the same actions don’t necessarily come off the same way. Some of that is simple partisanship: When your guy does it, it’s different from when the other guy does it. Another compelling explanation for why Trump gets away with the things he critiques is that some of his supporters love that he’s a brawler.

Michael Moore laid this line of thinking out in a recent New York Magazine interview. “They loved the brazenness of it. Even when they didn’t necessarily agree with it, they thought, That took balls. They may not personally think McCain’s a coward, but they think, Wow, that’s who I want. Somebody who’s just going to say shit like that,” Moore said. “Americans, they want somebody who stands up for the things that he or she believes in and says it without any apology.”

The extent to which Trump really is the Teflon Don is debatable. It is true that he has survived things that would have killed a lesser politician’s career a dozen times over; it is also true that his approval ratings are record-breakingly low, his administration is nearly devoid of major accomplishments, and he faces a perilous special-counsel investigation. For now, though, he remains standing.

The question is whether that applies to others. Trump’s aides and advisers seem to have come to believe that the force-field of gravity distortion that protects the president will apply to them too. Whether they are right is less clear.

Think of Michael Flynn’s mixing of private- and public-sector work, his decision not to make required disclosures, and his decision to lie to the vice president—and, perhaps, the FBI. Think of Paul Manafort allegedly advising a Russian billionaire even as he ran the Trump campaign. Think of Anthony Scaramucci’s R-rated circus-act of a 10-day tenure as White House communications director. Each of them behaved as though they too were immune to standard pressures. But Flynn was fired and is under multiple investigations. Manafort is too, and his home was raided before down by FBI agents; he has reportedly been told to expect to be indicted. Scaramucci was fired before he’d had a chance to get off the ground.

Kushner, so far, is still standing, but it’s easy to imagine that if he were not related to the president, he too might have been shoved out onto Pennsylvania Avenue. Like his boss and father-in-law, Kushner brings serious liabilities from his business career. He has multiple unexplained contacts with Russian officials, from the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting to a disputed meeting with the head of a Russian state-controlled bank, plus a report that he tried to set up a back channel with Russian officials. His clearance forms were highly incomplete, and he offered an implausible excuse. In fact, there were so many worrying moments that, according to The Wall Street Journal, some of the president’s lawyers wanted Kushner removed from the White House this summer. Trump refused.

A common knock on the Clintons was that they behaved as though the rules did not apply to them. Already, some members of Trump’s inner circle are acting the same way. Feeling immune to ordinary strictures can be alluring, but as Hillary Clinton learned, sometimes you only discover too late that it’s an illusion.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/09/the-brazenness-of-jared-and-ivankas-personal-email-server/541017/