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Home » It wasn’t just Russia that ran a disinformation program to influence our elections…

It wasn’t just Russia that ran a disinformation program to influence our elections…

The New Neo Posted on by

…although Trump and his aides had nothing to do with the Russian effort in 2016, as even Mueller was forced to admit.

Iran ran one, too, particularly in 2018:

This is the biggest revelation of its kind, highlighting Iran’s ability to influence the media and spread misinformation to shape U.S. public opinion. The FireEye’s research shows how Iran created an elaborate set-up to penetrate the U.S. social media landscape to wage psychological warfare. Will the liberal mainstream media, still looking for the smoking gun in Russian collusion more than two years on, put the same spotlight on Islamic Republic of Iran for this act of blatant hostility?

I think that last question is a rhetorical one. If it can’t be pinned on Trump, or even theoretically pinned on Trump, the answer is “no, of course not.”

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if other countries engage in efforts of the Russian and Iranian type. In fact, I assume some do. Do these efforts actually influence anyone? I doubt that all that many people are affected, but certainly nowhere near as many as the disinformation campaign mounted by much of the homegrown US media.

Comments

It wasn’t just Russia that ran a disinformation program to influence our elections… — 25 Comments

  1. It’s pretty obvious that every news story goes through the filter of does this hurt Trump. After that is decided the ones that don’t hurt Trump quietly go away after a couple days and the ones deemed worthy of hurting Trump become the day’s most outrageous outrage of all time.

  2. it only matters in close elections and close elections arenow the rule not the exception

    after the reorg we think was a fall, spying, stealing, etc,… went up vastly

    and before you can make that claim that they dont have much effect…
    you have to first find out what they own and actually do, besides what is reported

    and you REFUSE to talk about those things to add to your assesments
    it would have to do with things like operatives and methods and so on

    here is one:
    http://clever-publishing.com/

    Clever Publishing was founded in 2010 with the purpose of changing children’s lives for the better. We create a world full of fascinating experiences for families through our books, games, sets, and series. Focusing on Pre-school and Edutainment, we’ve developed a wide range of innovative formats with modern teaching techniques.

    Kids love to read, touch, and play while learning, so our program includes products for all ages including box sets; board books; puzzle books; learning flash cards; interactive coloring, activity, and word play formats; and boards games for the entire family.

    As the UK’s FutureBook conference opens this morning (December 1) in London, there’s news that the UK-based international Quarto Group and its Quarto Distribution arm will take Russian children’s specialist Clever Publishing into the North American market about a year from now.

    so, how would you know what is going on? did you know that russia distributes literature to schools and things through western sources.. and do so also with publishing houses, investments and more?

    what do you know of this process that you can assert your answer?

    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

    The Overlook Press is an American publishing house based in New York, New York, that considers itself “a home for distinguished books that had been ‘overlooked’ by larger houses”.

    It was formed in 1971 by Peter Mayer, who had previously worked at Avon and Penguin Books, where he was chief executive officer from 1978 to 1998

    and they own: Ardis Publishing:

    began in 1971, as the only publishing house outside of Russia dedicated to Russian literature in both English and Russian, Ardis was founded in Ann Arbor, Michigan by husband and wife scholars Carl R. Proffer and Ellendea C. Proffer. The Proffers had two goals for Ardis: one was to publish in Russian the “lost library” of twentieth-century Russian literature which had been censored and removed from Soviet libraries (Mandelstam, Tsvetaeva, Nabokov, among others); the other was to bring translations of contemporary writers working in the Soviet Union to the West.

    The archive of the original Ardis Publishers is now housed at the Special Collections Library of the University of Michigan.

  3. You think facebook is odd, and twitter too? that facebook grew and slew others and that it had almost an anointed rise..

    of course…
    it was a big major investment of the Russians..
    what else could expose so many and so much information

    VTB funded a $191m investment in Twitter…
    they are the bank of Gazprom…

    Gazprom Investholding financed an opaque offshore company,
    which in turn funded a vehicle that held $1bn-worth of Facebook shares.

    i brought this up before… but you did not want to delve into this stuff!!
    well no one does.. not until things happen that FORCE YOU TO
    then you realize, you should have been watching there all the tiem

    they are now trying to tie these investments to J Trump..
    but remember, in this game, lots of people get used and dont know!!!!

    Milner has invested $7bn in more than 30 online companies including Airbnb, Spotify and the Chinese retailers Alibaba and JD.com.

    he is now in silicon valley..

    Milner said VTB’s funding did not buy it influence at Twitter. He said he was not aware that Gazprom Investholding had backed the stake in Facebook. Milner said the deals were a small part of his overall investment portfolio and were done when US-Russia relations were better.

    Milner disputes that he is an associate of Kushner. He said he had invested in Kushner’s business purely for commercial reasons. He said they had met only once, over cocktails in the US last year. “I’m not involved in any political activity. I’m not funding any political activity,” said Milner.
    The disclosure that stakes in two of the US’s biggest technology companies were financed by Russian entities with links to the Kremlin comes as the covert use of their platforms by Russians aiming to boost Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign is under intense scrutiny. Both VTB and Gazprom are now under US sanctions.

    but thats not all..
    i told you this LONG AGO
    The raid on the office of Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen
    Artfldgr on April 10, 2018 at 5:03 pm said: who is going to ask Zuckerberg about the above? it was these russian companies that heavilyinvested and controlled the early days of facebook and twitter.. Yuri Milner was key (why not search and see what i wrote years ago about this day coming?)

    well, that day is here…
    and you cant remember i was trying to tell you BEFORE trump was even on the docket
    but you dont have all your articles from the prior site… your missing the sky capital i put up
    or maybe it was cut for size.

  4. Many nations attempt to interfere in the election of their opponents or in places where they have a strong economic interest. DC routinely attempts Israeli elections.

  5. Many nations attempt to interfere in the election of their opponents or in places where they have a strong economic interest. DC routinely attempts Israeli elections.

    parker: Absolutely. This is International RealPolitik 101.

    It’s so weird to find Democrats clutching their pearls on this — especially given their history of actively seeking help from the Soviets (Ted Kennedy in 1984) or deals with the Russians (the Clinton Foundation and the Uranium deal). The Steele dossier emerged from a Clinton-UK-Russia nexus.

    But Trump’s people having some meetings with Russians that went nowhere — bang! impeachment time.

    Cue Claude Rains: “I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in [this casino]!”

  7. Tucker Carlson spoke about Mexico’s considerable effort to influence U.S. elections last night. He has said that Russia had spent something like $47K to buy election influencing ads on Facebook vs. 10’s of millions in other avenues by Mexico.

    Here is a video page with the title: “Tucker: Mexico could be the real threat to our elections”
    _____

    “Do these efforts actually influence anyone? I doubt that all that many people are affected, but certainly nowhere near as many as the disinformation campaign mounted by much of the homegrown US media.” — Neo

    Certainly the US media is the 800 lb. gorilla. As to the first point? I recall a friend had his house on the market for at least a couple months at $300K even. His realtor told him, relist it at $299K. It sold in a couple days.

    “Nobody ever lost a dollar by underestimating the taste [or sophistication] of the American public.” ? P.T. Barnum

  10. Artfldgr: How long before you stop telling us we didn’t listen to you, we didn’t pay attention, that we didn’t want to “delve into this stuff”? Have faith, man — those of us who can wade through your posts are paying attention. Suggestion: succinct. Look it up.

  12. although Trump and his aides had nothing to do with the Russian effort in 2016, as even Mueller was forced to admit.

    Perhaps you should read the Mueller report first.

  13. Oh please manju, you haven’t read 400 plus pages of the Mueller report. How many dem representatives and senators have read the largely unredacted report? Give me an answer when its more than zero. People are not as stupid as you imagine or the people you hang with on fakebook or twatter.

    BTW, I read 200 plus pages of the report, and stopped when it became obvious it was a snow job. When you believe in things you don’t understand…

  14. That Democrats and the Press (birm) are not screaming about foreign interference in our, sacred, elections tells me all I need to know about their concern for the US and for Americans. They don’t care about me, they don’t care about our nation, all they care about is their hatred of DJT.

  16. During the 2004 campaign, The Guardian ran a publicized volunteer-staffed telephone campaign to one “borderline democrat” county in Ohio to help keep the terrible GH Bush from being re-elected. The county went Republican. It helped insure Ohio went Bush. Go Guardian!

  17. in re comments by Bill & TommyJay:
    How would anyone know which foreign efforts affected a particular election, and how, unless they could find an election in which NO foreign influence was attempted for comparison?

    Which is basically reiterating that countries interfere in each others elections all the time, and we will never fully know the extent and affect.

  18. “I recall a friend had his house on the market for at least a couple months at $300K even. His realtor told him, relist it at $299K. It sold in a couple days.” – TommyJay

    Basic commercial psychology, which I learned from my father while working at his Five & Dime in the sixties: people only look at the first digit. That’s why all your store prices are 9.95, 19.99, and so forth. Yes, people really are that stupid.

  19. F on May 30, 2019 at 11:36 pm said:
    Artfldgr: How long before you stop telling us we didn’t listen to you, we didn’t pay attention, that we didn’t want to “delve into this stuff”? Have faith, man — those of us who can wade through your posts are paying attention. Suggestion: succinct. Look it up.
    * * *
    Art actually does get off some succinct zingers from time to time, but you are never going to get him to stop the core dumps: that’s what he does.
    “You” is mostly rhetorical, I think, because, as Neo has pointed out, she can’t respond to everything everyone writes, and certainly doesn’t have to: she does what she does, and is not purporting to be an encyclopedic resourse.

    I find that Art dumps a LOT of information that is not in the general blogosphere, but it is frustrating that he doesn’t include links for attribution or search clues for research.

  20. Basic commercial psychology, which I learned from my father while working at his Five & Dime in the sixties: people only look at the first digit. That’s why all your store prices are 9.95, 19.99, and so forth. Yes, people really are that stupid.

    That’s… even lower a standard than I had for humanity. Hah. I knew why the prices were like that, but it shouldn’t have worked like that.

    Also why people shut down when I start talking about Newton’s Three body problem in calculus. Flies right over em.

  21. I find that Art dumps a LOT of information that is not in the general blogosphere, but it is frustrating that he doesn’t include links for attribution or search clues for research.

    Most of the stuff he quotes or links from, I already know about now. It’s not that important if you know where to go for sources.

  22. Commenter at the LI post almost gets it right, so I fixed it — never going to happen, though.

    LeftWingLock | May 30, 2019 at 4:47 pm
    We need to appoint a Special Counsel NOW to see if Trump Dem nominee for President was working with Iran. Under the new rules, Trump Dem nominee for President must PROVE he didn’t do anything to be declared innocent.

  23. Oh please manju, you haven’t read 400 plus pages of the Mueller report…BTW, I read 200 plus pages of the report, and stopped when it became obvious it was a snow job.

    Well Parker, if you think it’s a “snow job” then it sounds like you read the same report I did.

    You read the one that shows the Trump campaign knew more about Russian interference than anyone else. You read the one that shows they knew about it before almost anyone. You read the one that says they welcomed the help, particularly in regards to Wikileaks…a Taliban supporting organization that Trump says he loves.

    And yet the whole time they denied it. They denied that Russia was behind the hack. They said Putin supported Hillary, knowing damn well that Trump was the Useful Idiot Putin desired.

    I’m taking issue with the idea that Mueller was forced to admit that Trump and his aides had nothing to do with he Russian effort.

    You appear to know that this is not true. Presumably this forms the basis of your “snow job” accusation.

    I don’t agree but I’m not here to dissuade you of that notion. On the more fundamental issue of what the report says, I’m just glad we found common ground.

  24. What does Manju know and when did he know it? He still hasn’t admitted that he/she/they were interviewed by Mueller. 😉 If only Mueller had told all in his encore performance last week.

    We will have to wait for the crickets to tell us all that Manju “knows.” They may confirm all that Yammer “knows” too.

  25. Manju on June 1, 2019 at 5:48 am said:
    ..
    You read the one that shows the Trump campaign knew more about Russian interference than anyone else. You read the one that shows they knew about it before almost anyone. You read the one that says they welcomed the help, particularly in regards to Wikileaks…a Taliban supporting organization that Trump says he loves.

    And yet the whole time they denied it. They denied that Russia was behind the hack. They said Putin supported Hillary, knowing damn well that Trump was the Useful Idiot Putin desired.

    * * *

    https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/byron-york-retrospective-mueller-and-the-fatal-flaw-of-the-trump-russia-affair

    “The collusion narrative became so entrenched in the minds of some commentators that even when the Mueller report was made public, with its repeated statements that “the investigation did not establish that the [Trump] campaign coordinated or conspired with the Russian government in its election-interference activities,” some simply would not accept the verdict.”

    That “some” apparently includes Manju.
    If Mueller had thought that the things Manju listed meant Trump had conspired with the Russians, wouldn’t he have said so?

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