How to Spot Professional Trolls Online

Two professors at Clemson University have been analyzing social media and propaganda tactics that professional Russian and other foreign nation trolls use to foment social discord and distrust online in Western democracies. They analyzed data and Tweets that Twitter has made public. What they conclude is that, regardless of where they are located, amateur trolls who are bigoted, narrow minded, angry and/or try to provoke liberals, conservatives and minority groups and individuals just for the fun of it “aren’t a threat to Western democracy.”

By contrast with amateur trolls, professional democracy attackers are much more subtle and effective. They start by posting or Tweeting positive, warm messages designed to build a social media following. Rolling Stone writes:

Professional trolls are good at their job. They have studied us. They understand how to harness our biases (and hashtags) for their own purposes. They know what pressure points to push and how best to drive us to distrust our neighbors. The professionals know you catch more flies with honey. They don’t go to social media looking for a fight; they go looking for new best friends. And they have found them.

Disinformation operations aren’t typically fake news or outright lies. Disinformation is most often simply spin. Spin is hard to spot and easy to believe, especially if you are already inclined to do so. While the rest of the world learned how to conduct a modern disinformation campaign from the Russians, it is from the world of public relations and advertising that the IRA learned their craft. To appreciate the influence and potential of Russian disinformation, we need to view them less as Boris and Natasha and more like Don Draper.

As good marketers, professional trolls manipulate our emotions subtly. In fall 2018, for example, a Russian account we identified called @PoliteMelanie re-crafted an old urban legend, tweeting: “My cousin is studying sociology in university. Last week she and her classmates polled over 1,000 conservative Christians. ‘What would you do if you discovered that your child was a homo sapiens?’ 55% said they would disown them and force them to leave their home.” This tweet, which suggested conservative Christians are not only homophobic but also ignorant, was subtle enough to not feel overtly hateful, but was also aimed directly at multiple cultural stress points, driving a wedge at the point where religiosity and ideology meet. The tweet was also wildly successful, receiving more than 90,000 retweets and nearly 300,000 likes.

This tweet didn’t seek to anger conservative Christians or to provoke Trump supporters. She wasn’t even talking to them. Melanie’s 20,000 followers, painstakingly built, weren’t from #MAGA America (Russia has other accounts targeting them). Rather, Melanie’s audience was made up of educated, urban, left-wing Americans harboring a touch of self-righteousness. She wasn’t selling her audience a candidate or a position — she was selling an emotion. Melanie was selling disgust. The Russians know that, in political warfare, disgust is a more powerful tool than anger. Anger drives people to the polls; disgust drives countries apart. (emphasis added)

The researchers, Darren Linvill, associate professor of communication, and Patrick Warren, associate professor of economics, discussed their research with KUOW, an NPR affiliate station, in a 9 minute interview. KUOW writes:

To stop trolls from exploiting existing tensions in American society, he says people need to question why we’re seeing certain messages and the consequences of sharing them before hitting retweet.

“I think that there’s a lot that you can do,” Warren says. “If you’re mindful of the origins of the information you’re sharing, it can make a big difference.”

Linville: “..... I think it doesn’t ultimately [matter] if it’s a Russian troll or an Iranian troll or a Chinese troll, I think one needs to be careful when you’re interacting with anonymous accounts not to retweet someone just because they use the same hashtag as you did and you agree with them, but also not accuse people of being Russian trolls just because you disagree with them. I think that’s one of the biggest impacts of Russian disinformation is that we don’t trust each other anymore and it’s really dangerous and it’s a lasting impact.”

Warren: “I think it’s important to realize that when you share something on social media, you’re doing two things. You’re sharing a message, but you’re also bringing prominence to the account you’re sharing. And so the question you should be asking yourself often on social media, in addition to the obvious question that we all start with, which is: Is this real or not? The next question you should be asking yourself is, why am I seeing this? Algorithms kind of rule our lives on social media. And what these guys are trying to do is get people who shouldn’t be central to the conversation to become more central to the conversation due to their gaming of the algorithm.”

Defensive disinformation vs. offensive disinformation

Defensive disinformation is used by professional government trolls to deny and distract from information the government wants to hide, distort or deny. For example, the Saudi Arabian government ran botnet trolls on Twitter that falsely denied the Saudi government murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

By contrast, offensive disinformation which is  content specifically designed to manipulate emotions and attitudes by focusing on social stress points and playing on personal ideology. This kind of propaganda focuses on what is important to the people in the target country, not in the troll farm country. The goal is to to reinforce differences in existing attitudes and beliefs and use those differences to foment social division, distrust in institutions, e.g., the professional media, fellow citizens, and out-groups.

The ideology target

In a previous discussion here, I attacked political ideologies as a factor that significantly contributes to, or directly causes, major social and political problems. Strongly held ideological beliefs make it much easier to reject inconvenient facts, truths and sound reasoning. The research discussed in this OP makes it clear that professional trolls intentionally reinforce and then target ideological differences to foment social distrust and discord.

For self-defense against troll manipulation, the researchers suggest asking some self-reflection questions when you are confronted with social media content from a source you are not familiar with. First ask yourself, is this true? For ideologues, belief in lies is easy when the lie fits personal ideological belief. Second, ask why am I seeing this? Trolls know how to manipulate the algorithm. Third, ask what impact on other would sharing or upvoting this have? This asks for a measure of empathy, which in a way is an opposite of self-righteous belief, which can easily be reinforced by troll lies and manipulation.

Here’s Everything The Mueller Report Says About How Russian Trolls Used Social Media

The Mueller report clearly describes how Russian trolls reached millions of people on Facebook, were quoted in major newspapers as real Americans, and even organized rallies.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanhatesthis/mueller-report-internet-research-agency-detailed-2016

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election and the Trump campaign provides one of the most detailed looks at how Russia’s Internet Research Agency — the infamous Kremlin-linked troll farm — tried to hijack the 2016 election and swing the vote in favor of Donald Trump.

The report, which concludes that Trump didn’t commit a crime but “also does not exonerate him [of obstruction],” gives us a clear and exhaustive look at the scope, focus, and results of the IRA’s efforts. The agency learned how to use platforms like Facebook and Twitter over the span of four years. By the end, it used analytical tools and the built-in network effect of massive social media platforms to create large artificial grassroots political organizations that were aggressively targeting both Republicans and Democrats.

The IRA was able to reach up to 126 million Americans on Facebook via a mixture of fraudulent accounts, groups, and advertisements, the report says. Twitter accounts it created were portrayed as real American voices by major news outlets. It was even able to hold real-life rallies, mobilizing hundreds of people at a time in major cities like Philadelphia and Miami. Fake online personas were able to communicate with members of the Trump campaign — who were unaware they were ever communicating with foreign nationals.

Here’s everything we know about Russian interference from the report.

It started in 2014.

According to Mueller’s report, the IRA began creating fake Facebook accounts and small groups as early as 2014.

“IRA employees operated social media accounts and group pages designed to attract U.S. audiences,” the report reads. “These groups and accounts, which addressed divisive U.S. political and social issues, falsely claimed to be controlled by U.S. activists."

The lines up with what we already knew about the IRA’s activity. One of its first large-scale misinformation projects was the Columbian Chemicals Plant explosion hoax in September 2014, when IRA members created a completely fake explosion at a chemical plant in Louisiana. “The perpetrators didn’t just doctor screenshots from CNN; they also created fully functional clones of the websites of Louisiana TV stations and newspapers,” the New York Times wrote about the hoax.

The IRA consolidated all of its US operations into one department called the “Translator” department, which appears to have operated like a typical digital media startup with different agents focusing on specific platforms, monitoring analytics, and even graphic designers. About a dozen people, known as “specialists,” would run an account at a time.

The IRA’s activity wasn’t confined to social media, either. IRA employees traveled to the United States on intelligence-gathering missions in 2014.

“Four IRA employees applied to the U.S. Department of State to enter the United States, while lying about the purpose of their trip and claiming to be four friends who had met at a party,” the report reads. “Ultimately, two IRA employees-Anna Bogacheva and Aleksandra Krylova-received visas and entered the United States on June 4, 2014.”

The IRA was on pretty much every platform.

At first, the IRA focused its activity on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. Later, Tumblr and Instagram accounts were created. In the beginning, Russian trolls were manning only fake individual accounts. By 2015, however, they began creating larger groups and pages. Finally, they attempted to flex their network effect to hold real-life rallies.

According to Mueller’s report, the Facebook groups were particularly popular. By the time Facebook deactivated them in 2017, the Russia-controlled group "United Muslims of America" had over 300,000 followers, the "Don't Shoot Us" group had over 250,000 followers, the "Being Patriotic" Facebook group had over 200,000 followers, and the "Secured Borders" Facebook group had over 130,000 followers.

A post from an IRA-controlled Facebook page called "Secured Borders".

MUCH MORE TO THIS STORY HERE:

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanhatesthis/mueller-report-internet-research-agency-detailed-2016

NOW LET'S HEAR FROM TRUMPERS THAT THE REAL INTERFERENCE WAS REALLY BY THE UKRAINE!!

Climate Change in India

An New York Times article, India’s Ominous Future: Too Little Water, or Far Too Much, points out that climate change has altered the monsoon season. Now, the rains are less predictable and can be more prolonged when they arrive. That leaves large areas of the country in crippling drought or in floods. On top of that, decades of inept government policies leave millions of people mostly defenseless in the face of climate changes and hopeless levels of pollution, garbage and plastic waste.

Dry creek bed choked with litter

Foam from industrial runoff pass worshipers in the Yamuna River

Watching flood water

Collecting water for drinking and cooking

Flood in Mumbai

A resident of New Delhi washing under a broken municipal water line


Flood in Mumbai

A recent report on climate change is arguing that too little is being done. The Washington Post reports:

The world has squandered so much time mustering the action necessary to combat climate change that rapid, unprecedented cuts in greenhouse gas emissions offer the only hope of averting an ever-intensifying cascade of consequences, according to new findings from the United Nations. 

Amid that growing pressure to act, Tuesday’s U.N. report offers a grim assessment of how off-track the world remains. Global temperatures are on pace to rise as much as 3.9 degrees Celsius (7 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century, according to the United Nations’ annual “emissions gap” report, which assesses the difference between the world’s current path and the changes needed to meet the goals of the 2015 Paris climate accord.

The sobering report comes at a critical moment, when it remains unclear whether world leaders can summon the political will to take the ambitious action scientists say is essential. So far, the answer has been no.

No doubt that climate change science deniers will trot out the usual arguments in defense of doing nothing, just like gun violence deniers trot out their arguments for less gun control after each mass slaughter of innocents. India looks to be well and truly hosed.

A Massive Data Hack: Google Cloud Server Was Unprotected

Tech-Xplore reports a massive database was left unprotected:

"The data left unprotected was actually a database, aggregating 1.2 billion users' personal information, e.g., social media accounts, email addresses and phone numbers. The incident was relayed on the Data Viper blog. 

Bloomberg quoted Troia. "There are no passwords related to this data, but having a new, fresh set of passwords isn't that exciting anymore. Having all of this social media stuff in one place is a useful weapon and investigative tool."

After all, just nabbing names, phone numbers and account URLs delivers ample information to get attackers started."

Data Viper writes:

"On October 16, 2019 Bob Diachenko and Vinny Troia discovered a wide-open Elasticsearch server containing an unprecedented 4 billion user accounts spanning more than 4 terabytes of data. 

A total count of unique people across all data sets reached more than 1.2 billion people, making this one of the largest data leaks from a single source organization in history. The leaked data contained names, email addresses, phone numbers, LinkedIN and Facebook profile information. 

What makes this data leak unique is that it contains data sets that appear to originate from 2 different data enrichment companies. 

For a very low price, data enrichment companies allow you to take a single piece of information on a person (such as a name or email address), and expand (or enrich) that user profile to include hundreds of additional new data points of information. As seen with the Exactis data breach, collected information on a single person can include information such as household sizes, finances and income, political and religious preferences, and even a person’s preferred social activities. 

Each time a company chooses to “enrich” a user profile, they are also agreeing to provide what they know about the person to the enriching organization (thereby increasing the validity of the organization’s future results). Despite efforts from social media organizations like Facebook, the resulting data continues to be compounded, creating a situation with no oversight that ultimately allows all of a person’s social and personal information to be easily downloaded."

Wired magazine writes:

"For well over a decade, identity thieves, phishers, and other online scammers have created a black market of stolen and aggregated consumer data that they used to break into people's accounts, steal their money, or impersonate them. In October, dark web researcher Vinny Troia found one such trove sitting exposed and easily accessible on an unsecured server, comprising 4 terabytes of personal information—about 1.2 billion records in all. 

While the collection is impressive for its sheer volume, the data doesn't include sensitive information like passwords, credit card numbers, or Social Security numbers."

One can only hope that other cloud servers, e.g., ones the Social Security Administration or the US military uses, aren't just left open like that for anyone to play with. Past performance has not been confidence-inspiring and it probably does predict future performance.

Conspiracy Theory Wars

In the coming months, American can reasonably expect that some new information will surface that supports currently debunked conspiracy theories. One is the false theory that the Ukraine, not Russia, attacked the US election in 2106.

 This New York Times article suggests that fabricating evidence is what Giuliani is angling to do:

VIENNA — They were two Ukrainian oligarchs with American legal problems. One had been indicted on federal bribery charges. The other was embroiled in a vast banking scandal and was reported to be under investigation by the F.B.I. 

And they had one more thing in common: Both had been singled out by Rudolph W. Giuliani and pressed to assist in his wide-ranging hunt for information damaging to one of President Trump’s leading political rivals, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. 

That effort culminated in the July 25 phone call between the American and Ukrainian presidents that has taken Mr. Trump to the brink of impeachment and inexorably brought Mr. Giuliani’s Ukrainian shadow campaign into the light.

But interviews with the two Ukrainian oligarchs — Dmitry Firtash and Ihor Kolomoisky — as well as with several other people with knowledge of Mr. Giuliani’s dealings, point to a new dimension in his exertions on behalf of his client, Mr. Trump. Taken together, they depict a strategy clearly aimed at leveraging information from politically powerful but legally vulnerable foreign citizens.

How to assess new information: Don't ignore the old information

When the new information surfaces, one can ask by what measure should the new information by assessed? That is an excellent question. It's the key question.

The answer is to apply reasonable, logical measures of transparency and credibility to the new information in view of existing information. If the Senate investigation finds legitimate evidence of significant bad acts by Biden and/or Ukraine in the 2016 election, and is transparent about the sources and their credibility, then that evidence has to be accepted as real and given whatever reasonable probative weight it deserves.

However, one can reasonably expect that any new evidence that comes out from the Senate investigation will have to contradict existing contrary evidence. That's the point of building new conspiracy theories. If the origins or sources of the new evidence are not credible, and/or opaque or not revealed, e.g., for 'national security' reasons, then one can reasonably conclude that the GOP has now fallen so far into immorality that it is now willing to fabricate or rely on fabricated false evidence to lie to and deceive the American people for purely partisan gain.

If one wants to be fair and rational about this, these facts (not opinions) need to be kept in mind. Solid evidence already exists that shows (1) the Ukraine was not involved in the 2016 attacks on the US election, (2) Russia orchestrated the 2016 attacks on the US election, and (3) Trump[1] and his enablers, e.g., Rudy Giuliani,[2] are chronic liars who do not hesitate to lie, withhold information and emotionally manipulate to distract, deceive and confuse the American people. Those people would not hesitate to fabricate evidence to support the new conspiracy theory.

Whatever evidence the Senate comes up with has to (a) properly take existing evidence into account and render it not persuasive, and (b) be transparent in view of the mountain of lies and deceit the GOP has operated with since Trump came to power. In other words, existing evidence of lies, deceit and manipulation by Trump and the GOP means that they get no benefit of any doubt because they earned and fully deserve deep public distrust.

Footnotes:
1. The president's track record of false and misleading statements to the public is staggering. That constitutes solid evidence of his deeply immoral character. The existing herd of admitted or convicted felons the president has surrounded himself is more evidence of the president's immoral character.

2. In response to being asked what he would do if the president decided to 'throw him under the bus', Mr Giuliani responded with this retort: "I have insurance". That means that Mr. Giuliani probably has information that incriminated the president in illegal acts. What other kind of insurance would the president fear? It is hard to embarrass a man who isn't fazed by his acts and lies, e.g., sex with porn stars or the tape where he brags about sexually assaulting women. This is more evidence of the sleaze and immorality that the president and his enablers operate by. Given his behavior after prior gaffes, it is reasonable to expect Giuliani will deflect or distort his insurance comment by saying he did not mean that he had any evidence against the president.

False Conspiracy Theories On Tap

False conspiracy theories are probably going to be front and center from now until the November 2020 election. As discussed before, the GOP Senate claims it will investigate the debunked conspiracy about Joe Biden's allegedly corrupt activities in Ukraine. Unless that investigation relies on falsified information, it will probably not turn up anything new that is significant.

Other false conspiracies include (1) unsubstantiated allegations that the FBI was protecting the Clinton campaign, which (2) illegally sought dirt on Trump from foreign sources, and (3) the FBI used unsubstantiated allegations for FISA authority to spy on the Trump campaign, which (4) somehow hurt the Trump campaign, despite it being conducted in secret until several months after the November 2016 election. As far as I know, none of those narratives is true. Instead, the FBI protected Trump by not making its investigation of him public, but damaged the the Clinton campaign by making its investigation of hers public just a few weeks before the election. Those are matters of public record.

Also, it is still legal to hire people, including foreigners in other countries, to get dirt on political opponents. The effort to get damaging information on Trump was originally funded by a conservative source, The Washington Free Beacon, to find potentially damaging information about Trump. The Beacon hired Fusion GPS, a company that clients hire to find dirt on political opponents. The Beacon was funded by a major donor to Sen. Marco Rubio. Rubio told Fusion GPS to stop compiling a dossier of Trump dirt in May 2016 once it became clear that Trump would win the GOP nomination. All of that was legal. After that time, the DNC continued compiling a dossier on Trump. The New York Times describes the DNC involvement:

After Mr. Trump secured the nomination, Fusion GPS was hired on behalf of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign and the D.N.C. by their law firm, Perkins Coie, to compile research about Mr. Trump, his businesses and associates — including possible connections with Russia. It was at that point that Fusion GPS hired Mr. Steele, who has deep sourcing in Russia, to gather information. ..... Campaigns and party committees frequently pay companies to assemble what’s known in politics as opposition research — essentially damaging information about their opponents — and nothing is illegal about the practice.

Wikipedia comments on Fusion GPS:

Fusion GPS is a commercial research and strategic intelligence firm based in Washington, D.C. The company conducts open-source investigations and provides research and strategic advice for businesses, law firms and investors, as well as for political inquiries, such as opposition research. The "GPS" initialism is derived from "Global research, Political analysis, Strategic insight".

None of this is illegal under current law and regulations. Candidates for major offices routinely look for dirt to attack and smear their opponents with. The situation would change if (1) the Federal Election Commission ruled that accepting campaign dirt from a foreigner constitutes a "thing of value", or (2) congress passed a law making it illegal for a campaign ro accept or use dirt a foreigner provides.

Also relevant are the facts that (1) Trump himself has publicly stated that he would use dirt on an opponent if a foreigner offered it to him before the 2020 election, and (2) Trump actually tried to get the Ukraine to find dirt on Joe Biden in advance of the 2020 campaign. One source reports on Trump's public statement that he would use foreign-sourced dirt to attack an opponent:

In an interview with ABC News on Wednesday, Trump said he’d consider any foreign-sourced information that would help his 2020 re-election bid.

“There is nothing wrong with listening,” Trump said. “If somebody called from a country — Norway — ‘We have information on your opponent.’ Oh. I think I’d want to hear it.” ..... But simply “listening” to information derived from foreign sources may not rise to the level of a campaign finance violation.

That makes it clear that, at least under current law, the president himself has no concern about obtaining and using dirt to attack a political opponent, regardless of its source. It is good to note that use of dirt from a foreigner to smear an opponent need to be directly used. Such information can be leaked to friendly sources who would be happy to smear the target candidate. Plausible deniability would likely protect all involved.

Unsubstantiated assertion of no FISA authority

Allegations that there was no FISA authority to investigate the Trump campaign or the investigation damaged the president's campaign are not supported by facts. Those assertion raises two questions: (1) what evidence is there to support that assertion, and (2) how could the FBI investigation have made any difference in the 2016 election outcome because it was in secret? Since the FBI investigation of Trump was not revealed to the public until March of 2017, about four months after the November 2016 election. Also, there was no evidence that Obama had wiretapped Trump, which Trump had falsely claimed.

One source writes about the origin of the investigation and authority for FISA surveillance:

The heavily redacted documents released Saturday comprise an application to, and subsequent renewals by, judges on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court allowing the FBI to investigate Page, a foreign policy aide to the Trump campaign. But it's already been established by the House Intelligence Committee that the Russia investigation began after the FBI learned that another campaign aide, George Papadopoulos, had been approached by a Russian agent. The agent told Papadopoulos the Russians had incriminating information about Hillary Clinton, including emails, according to court documents.. Papadopoulos then mentioned to an Australian diplomat that the Russians had "dirt" on Clinton, the Australians contacted the U.S. government, and the FBI began to take a look.

One source reports on Papadopoulos:

In July 2017, Papadopoulos was secretly arrested for lying to FBI investigators about his correspondence with foreign nationals with close ties to senior Russian government officials. His indictment was revealed to the public after he pleaded guilty in October 2017. In September 2018, Papadopoulos was sentenced to 14 days incarceration, 200 hours of community service and a $9,500 fine.

That is evidence that the FBI had proper FISA authority for its investigation of the Trump campaign.

Despite the evidence outlined above, it is likely that all these false conspiracy theories, and probably many others, will be tested on the public in coming months to see which ones gain traction. This election is going to be very ugly.

Senate Starts Bidens in Ukraine Investigation

The Daily Beast and other sources are announcing that the Senate is starting an investigation into the Biden's actions in the Ukraine. The DB writes:

“Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-SC) sent a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday requesting documents related to Joe Biden’s communications with Ukrainian officials. Graham’s inquiry focuses on any calls Biden may have had with former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko about the firing of the country’s top prosecutor, or any calls that referenced Burisma, the Ukrainian gas company where Biden’s son Hunter sat on the board. The Washington Post reports that Graham’s letter appears to begin an investigation into Trump’s widely debunked claim that Biden, who at the time was vice president, put pressure on Ukraine to fire its top prosecutor in an attempt to protect his son.”

This is an interesting move by the Senate. If there is the same level of openness about this investigation there was in the House impeachment inquiry, it should add to the amount of information the public has access to. So far, the president and State Department has refused to cooperate and thus additional evidence about the GOP alleged Biden-Ukraine conspiracy should come to light. Presumably the conspiracy will remain debunked, which should help dispel the GOP’s Biden corruption in Ukraine narrative.

The concern is that if the Senate proceedings are not made public as the House has done, then there is a significant likelihood that false information will be faked and used to smear Biden.

Debunking false conspiracies and other forms of nonsense

By now, it is clear to nearly all reasonably open-minded observers that the two sides in Washington are not going to cooperate with each other. There is too much hate and distrust for that for the time being, maybe for a very long time. One side in particular, the GOP, keeps relying on debunked conspiracies and other forms of false and misleading information to create false realities and advance their flawed, reality-detached messages.

Since the two sides won't cooperate, the next best thing to get at truth for the public is for the Senate to run its investigations and the House to run its investigations. Between the two of them, so long as the investigations aren't corrupt, the public should get the benefits of whatever information comes to light.

Honest investigations vs. dishonest investigations

If it turns out that Joe Biden did act illegally or improperly in the Ukraine, then the public needs to know that. Unfortunately, the Senate is just now starting its investigation. They can choose to drag it out and dribble out whatever damaging material there may be, or damaging false information they assert, until the election. In that scenario, the GOP can do to Biden’s 2020 campaign exactly what the Russians and Wikileaks did to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. Just keep dripping out damaging material just before the election to damage Biden’s campaign as much as possible.

No doubt, the Russians are planning to attack the democratic nominee, regardless of who that turns out to be. If Biden is nominated, he could be under attack by both a dishonest GOP investigation and an illegal Russian lies and smear campaign.

Can one point the same finger of blame at the current House investigation? Are the democrats dragging their impeachment investigation out? Arguably they are not yet at that point. That investigation is focused on potentially impeachable information that became publicly known in recent months, i.e., the September 2019 release of the president’s phone call partial transcript and the whistleblower report in September of this year of improper actions by the president. The House is not pursuing anything in the Mueller report, which seems to put evidence of the president’s obstruction of justice and conspiracy with Russia off limits. If the House drags their investigation out until, say May, then an allegation of a dishonest, purely partisan investigation becomes reasonable.

By contrast with the House investigation of the president’s actions in Ukraine, the Biden-Ukraine conspiracy theory has been around for years. The GOP could have started this investigation while Obama was still in office. Instead of investigating Biden years ago, the GOP chose to ignore it until now. One has to ask why now?

So far, the House investigation looks to be mostly honest, but arguably significantly (but not completely) partisan. Whether the Senate investigation turns out to be honest or dishonest cannot be known now. It is fair to have some skepticism about GOP motives in waiting for years to begin an investigation the party showed no serious interest in until now. The GOP’s timing is curious, to say the least. Time will tell how the Senate chooses to conduct itself.

Sounds Like Projection & Misinformation

Human scum

The president tweeted this today: “Corrupt politician Adam Schiff’s lies are growing by the day. Keep fighting tough, Republicans, you are dealing with human scum who have taken Due Process and all of the Republican Party’s rights away from us during the most unfair hearings in American History. But we are winning big, and they will soon be on our turf.”

Human scum? Given all the felony indictments, guilty pleas and convictions that the felons the president surrounded himself with, that sounds like the president is projecting his own moral character and temperament. Psychological projection is a defence mechanism the ego uses to defend itself against unconscious impulses or qualities by denying their existence in themselves but attributing them to others.

Not working

Other projections from the GOP are common at present. One is the false assertion that democrats are not working but are wasting time with impeachment hearings. One of the things that constitutes working for congress is legislating and legislating in a democracy requires compromising. If there is no compromise, then it's not democracy and instead is some form of tyranny, oligarchy or single-party rule.

At present, congressional GOP members refuse to compromise and when there is legislation, the GOP Senate ignores it instead of opening up communications on compromises. In fact, while democrats have done their job the GOP is proud of not doing its job. For example, Senate majority leader McConnell openly calls himself the ‘grim reaper’ who will kill any House legislation he dislikes. As of about six months ago, the Grim Reaper had killed over 100 pieces of legislation the House had passed. Legislation requires compromise when the House and Senate are controlled by different parties.

It goes without saying that when circumstances demand it, the House needs to hold an impeachment inquiry. That is working under House rules, despite GOP allegations of single party unfairness and refusal to compromise. The Senate will deal with impeachment in its own way according to its own rules. Legislation requires compromise when the House and Senate are controlled by different parties. Impeachment does not require compromise between the parties.

Lies

The president’s tweet quoted above accuses Adam Schiff of lying. In view of the president’s staggering public record of making over 13,000 false and misleading statements as of October 9, 2019, he is arguably projecting once again. No other president in recent history has come close to this level of blatant contempt for truth and disrespect for people who do value honesty. With a track record like that, the president has earned and deserves no trust from anyone. That some people choose to trust him despite a record of chronic lying is their own choice made for their own reasons.

Some House GOP members are advancing a debunked narrative that the Ukraine, not Russia, interfered with the 2016 election to help the president win the Electoral College vote. In her opening statement this morning, Fiona Hill, former White House Russia expert testified that this narrative is false and harmful to US interests and to the Ukraine. Her written speech on this point reads as follows:

“Based on questions and statements I have heard, some of you on this committee appear to believe that Russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country—and that perhaps, somehow, for some reason, Ukraine did. This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves.

The unfortunate truth is that Russia was the foreign power that systematically attacked our democratic institutions in 2016. This is the public conclusion of our intelligence agencies, confirmed in bipartisan Congressional reports. It is beyond dispute, even if some of the underlying details must remain classified.

The impact of the successful 2016 Russian campaign remains evident today. Our nation is being torn apart. Truth is questioned. Our highly professional and expert career foreign service is being undermined.

..... 

I say this not as an alarmist, but as a realist.” (emphasis added)

In view of existing evidence, the false GOP Ukraine interference narrative is at least misinformation and lies at worst.

Have Humans Hit Peak Intelligence?

An article at Neurologica blog by Steven Novella discusses an article at The Conversation that considers the interesting question of whether humans are at or near the limits of what the human mind can comprehend. What prompts the inquiry is an apparent slowing in the rate of advances in knowledge. One issue increasing complexity in technology is needed to push the edge of knowledge forward. Another concern comes from decades of failure in trying to solve some problems that science revealed in the last century.

That raises the question of whether the human mind is at or near the limits of its capacity to comprehend reality to the extent technology can make reality apparent to human senses. For example, we still cannot make sense of some aspects of quantum mechanics (duality and apparent non-locality). The article at Neurologica asks if that roadblock is akin to trying to teach a cat to understand calculus. Maybe the cat brain-mind is simply not equipped to comprehend calculus.

The Conversation article posits the problem like this:

“Will science ever be able to provide all the answers? Human brains are the product of blind and unguided evolution. They were designed to solve practical problems impinging on our survival and reproduction, not to unravel the fabric of the universe. This realization has led some philosophers to embrace a curious form of pessimism, arguing there are bound to be things we will never understand. Human science will therefore one day hit a hard limit – and may already have done so.”

The Novella article responds:

“We are having to work harder and harder for progressively smaller returns. Rather than hitting a wall, I agree that we will likely just wade into the molasses. We will keep pushing deeper and deeper into fundamental theories about how the universe works, but progress will become slower and slower. While I think it is reasonable to conclude that this is likely the long term trend of scientific discovery, I don’t think we are in a position to determine where we are in that arc. You cannot see a pattern when you are in the middle of it. .... But more predictably, we are also developing artificial intelligence. Whatever you think about the current state and the rate of progress of this endeavor, we are steadily developing more and more intelligent machines, and eventually we will very likely develop general AI with capabilities beyond humans.”

Complexity is an issue that the Novella article addresses. Because complexity in both technology and society is increasing, it is possible that at some point in time we will not be able to effectively manage it. That could lead to some sort of spontaneous or semi-managed breakdown and reset of civilization. Novella writes:

“Think of our legal system, our medical system, any bloated piece of software, and of course biological systems. At some point there may be a revolution and cleansing, wipe the slate clean and start fresh. That is the long-term pattern of human history. No state lasts forever. The cleansing does not always have to be a revolution, however, it can be a managed reformation.”

Has peak intelligence been hit in some areas of the law?

Mention of our legal system is interesting. My own experience with federal courts led me to conclude about a decade ago that the trial courts and the supreme court were no longer able to deal rationally or competently with complex legal battles over intellectual property. Supreme court holdings were blowing certain areas of law to pieces on irrational grounds. Generalist attorney-judges, usually liberal arts majors, simply could not understand technical complexity, especially in areas of biomedical research, chemistry and molecular biology. The solution appeared to be to create a separate supreme court[1] for intellectual property and technology-based disputes with the judges composed of chemists, engineers and biomedical and other technical experts. In other words, science had advanced past the capacity of the law to keep up.

Instead of lawyers, some areas of law arguably need scientists, not just generalist lawyers, to judge in the midst of staggering complexity. Arguably, the law at least in certain technology areas is beyond a level it can always deal with competently.

Footnote:
1. Since the 1980's, a single appeals court, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC), has dealt with all patent cases from all states. The CAFC is unique among appeals courts because it has jurisdiction based completely on subject matter instead of geographic location. That court was created because the other federal appeal circuits dealing with patents were hopelessly messed up about not only the law itself, which deals with a couple of intractably complex concepts based on personal judgment, e.g., obviousness, but also increasingly complex technology. The CAFC was one of several congressional attempts to make patent law more coherent and rational and thus predictable. In recent years the supreme court, in its majestic ignorance, has intervened and set patent law back to the incomprehensible, unpredictable black magic of the early 1950s in certain technology areas.

For @#$% sake, choose another word

By Jim Cosgrove
https://www.kansascity.com/living/family/article97041052.html

Consider the F-word. Yup, that F-word. The granddaddy of all curse words. The exhaustingly exploited F-bomb.

Yes, I’ve used it. You’ve probably used it, too. And if you haven’t, you’ve thought about using it.

That emotionally charged word has become a topic of interesting conversation in our house now that school has started.

“I hear that word all the time from the boys in my class,” our younger daughter said.

“Yeah, me too,” said our sixth-grader. “Third grade was about the time I started to hear it.”

While they might hear it more often on the playground and in the cafeteria, it’s not like they haven’t heard it before at sporting events or from strangers walking down the street.

I’m not particularly offended by the F-word. It’s just annoying, like a linguistic gnat. Its overuse renders it meaningless. Like when it’s used to describe something awesome and something heinous. How can it be both?

It starts creeping into the lexicon of kids who want to feel cool and empowered, like they’re getting away with something. And it pretty much continues to be used by those same kids when they’re adults and for the same reasons.

A few years ago, I attended a presentation at work by a well-respected and talented video producer. About 15 minutes into his talk, he dropped an F-bomb, then he paused, and with a mischievous grin said, “It’s cool if I use that here, right?” He had the self-satisfied look of a 10-year-old who just got away with passing gas at Thanksgiving dinner.

Despite some squirming and uncomfortable laughter from most of the nearly 100 people in the audience, not one of us was willing to admit to being “uncool.” Apparently he took this as an expletive-approving green light.

I started counting how many times he used the F-word and finally gave up after a dozen or so. I soon lost interest in the presentation, because his videos, although impressive, were completely upstaged by his lack of class and his disrespect for a professional environment. Maybe some people found his cavalier attitude refreshing and endearing. I guess I’m just not that cool.

From a grammatical standpoint, I must admit that the F-word has impressive versatility. Although it emerged primarily as a verb, its variations can be used as a noun, adjective, adverb, interjection and an effective intensifier. There aren’t many words with that kind of range.

But aside from that, it’s a lazy choice. And I find it boring when comedians use it excessively. The most creative and funny people don’t have to lean on obscenities and shock to get a laugh.

I can appreciate that the F-word has its place when, say, a hammer falls on your toe. And I have to laugh in conversation with my Irish friends who were weaned on the word and can’t help using it in every other sentence. And it’s pretty funny when Grandma drops a cuss word at a family gathering and grabs everyone’s attention.

As a parent and a lover of language and civility, my appeal to habitual F-bombers is to simply show some respect. We’ve taught our girls that a person’s choice of words is often an indication of how they’ll treat others. If people use disrespectful language, they’ll likely be disrespectful in other ways.

Words have power. They carry energy, vibrations and resonance. The F-word has especially low vibration. That’s why it’s a popular choice in negative energy situations of anger and aggression.

Most people avoid lobbing these word grenades around children or their own moms. So why would we not extend the same respect to friends, co-workers and strangers — or to an audience we were being paid to address?

If you want to grab attention with your language, then consider a creative challenge to try something new. Check out a thesaurus. You’ll find thousands of interesting words in there.

Some personal observations by Snowflake:

The F word might be the granddaddy of all curse words, but the C word is far more offensive - just saying.

Otherwise, I would say people who over-use the F word have a F......in' lack of imagination - just saying

Impeachment Hearings & Vetting Information Sources

Ranking member Devin Nunes gave his opening comments before the start of witness testimony in the House impeachment hearing this morning. His version of reality, presumably the GOP-Trump vision, is mostly the opposite of the democratic vision. One of the sources that Nunes dwelled on in his opening statements was reporter John Solomon. Nunes claimed that Solomon's reporting contradicts most or all of the democratic view of what Ukraine did not did not do.

Who is John Solomon?

Wikipedia has a bio on Solomon. The bio includes these comments:

John F. Solomon is an American media executive, and a conservative political commentator. He was an editorialist and executive vice president of digital video for The Hill[1] and as of October, 2019, is a contributor to Fox News.[2] He was formerly employed as an executive and as editor-in-chief at The Washington Times.[3]

While he won a number of prestigious awards for his investigative journalism in the 1990s and 2000s,[4][5] he has also been accused of magnifying small scandals and creating fake controversy.[6][7][8] During Donald Trump's presidency, he has been known for advancing Trump-friendly stories. He played a role in advancing conspiracy theories about wrong-doing involving Joe Biden, his son Hunter Biden and Ukraine; Solomon's stories about the Bidens influenced President Trump to request that the Ukrainian president launch an investigation into 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, which led to an impeachment inquiry into President Trump.[2]

Some of Solomon's reporting has been criticized as inaccurate. Wikipedia:

On the same day that The Washington Post published its article, The Hill published another opinion piece by Solomon in which Solomon states that there are "(h)undreds of pages of never-released memos and documents...(that) conflict with Biden’s narrative."[30]

Solomon's stories had significant flaws.[23][20] Not only had the State Department dismissed the allegations presented by Solomon as "an outright fabrication", but the Ukrainian prosecutor who Solomon claimed made the allegations to him is not supporting Solomon's claim.[23][20] Foreign Policy noted that anti-corruption activists in Ukraine had characterized the source behind Solomon's claims as an unreliable narrator who had hindered anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine.[31]

At least for now, House republicans are relying significantly on Solomon to see no impeachable, illegal or improper offenses by the president and duplicity by Joe Biden. Republicans adhere to that despite evidence that key pieces of Solomon's information is false. Some of the documents Solomon relies on for his narrative appear to be innocuous, at least on first blush, e.g., this and this.

Who and what are people supposed to believe?

Few Americans are going to read translations of Ukrainian documents and put them in context. They are not going to spend hours reading and confirming accuracy of facts and narratives by Solomon and others who assert the same. They should not have to do that. It is the job of the mainstream media and our political leaders to distil and accurately convey relevant facts and truths.

These days, the issue of who and what to trust in politics comes up over and over and over. Partisans tell us to trust people like Solomon and/or independent journalists who convey narratives that are either not reported by the MSM or at odds with existing MSM reporting and/or facts of record.

Someone is lying about reality here. The two competing impeachment narratives are mutually exclusive. Both cannot be mostly correct. Both can be mostly wrong, but only one can be mostly correct. What is astounding is the fact that both facts of record and the reasoning applied to them are in bitter, non-resolvable dispute.

In view of the situation, it is fair to call this tribalism, not reasoned politics. One side to the other arguably is much more at fault for the situation than the other. That assumes that one side is mostly right about their facts and logic and the other is mostly wrong. For better or worse, the analysis and ultimate conclusion is clouded by partisan subjective assessments of right and wrong. For most of the president's defenders, the now acknowledged quid pro quo does not amount to anything improper, unethical, illegal or impeachable. Nunes' opening statements seem to make that clear. The moral assessment on the democratic side mostly appears to be or is that at least impeachable acts are at issue.

Which set of facts and narrative is most likely true?

What are the controlling facts here? Most people, maybe about 95%, will mostly believe what their tribe and the various MSM and non-MSM media sources they rely on tell them. In essence, facts are now partisan things. Constant but unwarranted attacks on the professional MSM by the president and his supporters make have succeeded in poisoning the MSM as a reliable information source for millions of Americans. The vacuum that decades of mainly conservative distrust has creates leaves a huge opening for non-MSM sources to begin to look more reliable and trustworthy. Millions of Americans believe, or could come to believe, that Solomon's narrative and facts are reliable and true. In this vacuum, Americans can come to believe that reporters who publish on crackpot sites are telling truth even when they are not.

If that analysis is basically correct, and it appears to be, the people who have fomented unwarranted distrust. This is not an argument that the MSM is completely unbiased or that it never makes mistakes. It is biased and sometimes makes mistakes. The MSM has largely fallen to corporate ownership and the inherent censorship that comes with the profit motive. Despite the shortcomings and flaws, this is an argument that the MSM is still routinely more reliable than many or most the alternatives that people raise to advance their own narratives.

Based on the relevant facts and reasoning that flows from the facts, Nunes assertions and Solomon's narrative are both indefensible and wrong.

If that logic and conclusion is flawed, what are the facts and counter arguments that make it more wrong than right?

The Rule of Law is Falling

A few minutes ago the Supreme Court hinted that it could grant the president a shield to hide bad acts and crimes while in office by making investigation of him impossible. One news source writes:

“WASHINGTON (AP) — Chief Justice John Roberts is ordering an indefinite delay in the House of Representatives’ demand for President Donald Trump’s financial records. Roberts’ order Monday contains no hint about how the Supreme Court ultimately will resolve the dispute. It follows a filing by the House earlier Monday in which the House agreed to a brief halt for the orderly filing of legal briefs, while opposing any lengthy delay. Those written arguments will allow the justices to decide whether they will jump into the tussle between Congress and the president. Last week, Trump made an emergency appeal to ask the justices to block the enforcement of a subpoena issued by a House committee to Trump’s accountants. The House has until Thursday to respond, Roberts said. The high court has a separate pending request from Trump to block a subpoena from a New York prosecutor for Trump’s tax returns.”

This is what the fall of the rule law looks like. That the court would even consider an “indefinite delay” is incomprehensible. Corrupting courts and law enforcement is how tyrants and kleptocrats rise to power. The separation of powers is collapsing before our eyes. In my opinion, if the court really does wind up blocking investigations long as Trump is in office, or even for ‘just’ a month, that would effectively end of any pretense at independence and impartiality that Chief justice Roberts can seriously assert. Pretenses of independence and impartiality are already very weak assertions. Both just might be about to completely disappear. Obviously, the president and his supporters will cheer this development as a return to the constitutional rule of law or something akin to it.

Documentary: Plutocracy

Plutocracy: government by the wealthy; an elite or ruling class of people whose power derives from their wealth

Plutocracy is a five part documentary that describes the brutal conflict between American labor and owners. Each part is about 1 hour, 50 minutes to 2 hours long. This is a low-budget production that includes interviews with historians, e.g., Peter Rachleff. The series relies heavily on documented history and paints a dark, gruesome picture of economic struggles in the US that public schools do not teach. The series is online and can be viewed at many sites, e.g., here and on YouTube.

Part 1 of Plutocracy, Divide et Impera (Divide and Rule), focuses on how American people were intentionally divided by rulers and wealthy people on the basis of race, ethnicity, sex and skill level. The point of fomenting division was to keep society distracted and weak in the face of unified wealth which was fighting hard and dirty to keep people misinformed and in poverty.

When West Virginia coal miners in the early 1900s decided to form labor unions, the owners fought back. Extreme working conditions including long hours, high accident rates and severe health hazards led workers to try organize themselves. They fought back by striking and forming labor unions. The coal industry itself fought back by importing replacement workers, and imposing contracts that barred workers from unionizing. In the process of fighting for freedom from the brutal capitalism that wealthy industrialists imposed, thousands of lives were lost, and thousands more were wounded or jailed.

Plutocracy, Part 1 at 59:11

The documentary suggests that when workers united to fight for fair and equal rights, some progress was possible. The documentary argues that the country's Founders saw a potential for these class conflicts. One can argue that attempts to protect individuals, for example in the Bill of Rights, were directed more at protecting the masses from government than they were at protecting them from capitalists and brutal laissez-faire capitalism. It isn't clear that similar brutalization of workers cannot occur under socialism or communism. This just shows one vision of the American experience.

This documentary makes it much easier to understand and accept the argument that in America, power and wealth are synonymous for the most part. The amazing power that industrialists were able to bring to bear in brutalizing and murdering workers speaks for itself. The question this work raises is how accurate and fact-based is it? Heavy reliance on historical records lend credence to the work and its message. Nonetheless, propaganda can take truth, optionally mixed with lies and misleading content, and present it in different lights, good, bad or ambiguous.

How real is this?

My search for a review of the series by a historian turned nothing up, which is concerning. The left wing sources I scanned all cited this work approvingly. The right wing sources I looked at either don't mention it or I missed reference to it. If anyone knows a historian who has reviewed some or all of this documentary, their thoughts about the historical accuracy of this work would be appreciated. My guess is that this is mostly truth with modest propaganda woven into it.

VIOLENT CRIME: THE US AND ABROAD

The US has more guns per capita than anywhere else in the world. We have massive organized crime, drug and human trafficking, and ever-looming terrorist threats. We have one of the most organized and efficient police forces on Earth. We also have a never-ending news cycle to remind us of these things. With sensationalism in the news, and stories of shooting sprees on a monthly basis, is violent crime really getting worse in America? Where does our perception that crime is growing meet the actual numbers? How does violent crime in America stack up against the rest of the world?
[Tweet “The US has a very specific brand of violence.”]

Perhaps the most difficult part of comparing violent crime in the US and abroad is determining who we’re comparing with the US. Middle Eastern, Central American, and African metropolises are by and large much more dangerous than US cities, but are they representative of the rest of the world?

Most of Europe is safer than Detroit, but are Detroit and Europe representative?

More than 3 out of 4 Americans feel safe walking around where they live at night. While this is a measurement of perceived crime, and not crime itself, the perception is that the US as a whole is as safe as most modern industrialized nations. This is probably bolstered by the fact that 78.6% of Americans have confidence in local police; a measure only topped by Scandinavian nations and Canada. Plus the fact that a large percentage of violent crime in America is concentrated in relatively small geographic areas, and, as we know, the US is a massive place.
[Tweet “The US as a whole is as safe as most modern industrialized nations.”]

Violent crime has declined sharply in the US since the mid 1990’s. While this is due to a variety of changes in enforcement, rehabilitation of criminals, and overall higher standards of living, a large portion of the similarities between the crime levels of US and western European countries hinges on differences in what crimes are reported. The FBI counts four categories of crime as violent crime: murder and non-negligible manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. While aggravated assault is the only assault category included under violent crime reports in the US, other nations include the much more numerous level 1 assault in violent crime reporting. This makes the US appear relatively less violent from a statistical perspective.

Another difference between the US and other relatively safe developed nations is that the US has a much higher homicide rate than similarly “safe” countries. 14,827 people were murdered in the US last year. This is way down from the 24,526 US murders in 1993, yet still leaves the US at 4.8 murders per 100,000 citizens. In comparison, Japan has .4 murders per 100,000 residents. Germany has .8, Australia 1, France 1.1, and Britain–who has recently garnered media attention for being the most dangerous wealthy European nation– has 1.2.

A LAND OF EXTREMES

The most dangerous US cities rank among the most deadly cities in the world. New Orleans, which topped the list in 2012, saw one homicide for every 2000 residents. To put this number in perspective, the average homicide per 100,000 citizen rate for the US is 4.8. Meaning you’re more than 10 times more likely to be the victim of a homicide in New Orleans than America as a whole.

Bear in mind, however, that the cities with the top 5 homicide rates in the world boast substantially higher rates than any other cities on the list. To put the numbers in context, you’re more than 3 times likelier to be the victim of a homicide in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, than in New Orleans, and more than 30 times more likely when comparing San Pedro Sula to the US as a whole.

Another notable trend is that no European or Asian cities are in the top 50 deadliest cities. This complicates the picture of the US standing toe-to-toe with the industrialized world as a low violent crime nation. At the very least, the deadliest cities in the US have many more homicides than the deadliest cities in Europe and Asia. At most, the US is a in a pandemic of homicides, even while other types of violent crime are stifled.

[Tweet “No European or Asian cities are in the top 50 deadliest cities.”]

TYPES OF VIOLENT CRIME

The US has a very specific brand of violence. Perhaps our criminals are just more motivated than the rest of the world, or perhaps having a firearm for every man, woman or child in America ups the ante in confrontations. Either way, the involvement of guns in violent crime (and the defense against violent crime) is a decidedly American phenomena amongst developed nations.

With gun restrictions making it harder to obtain private weapons in the UK, violent crimes involving guns have greatly decreased. The number of total violent crimes, however, is almost double that of the US. Of those crimes, only 19% even involve a weapon, and only 5% of those involve a firearm. That means that of you’re roughly 1/100 chance of being involved in a violent crime in Britain and Wales in any given year, you have roughly a 1/10,000 chance of being in a violent crime involving a gun.

Alternately, in the US your chances of being involved in a violent crime are less than 1/250. Of those involved with violent crimes, however, you have greater than a 1/10,000 chance of being involved in a violent crime involving a gun. In a country with less than half the violent crime, you have a greater chance of being the victim of a violent crime involving a gun.

Here’s where gun control advocates would say that the proliferation of easily available and private firearms enable gun crimes. This is also where gun rights advocates would point to the much lower violent crime rate in a similarly governed and wealthy nation. In a way, they’re both right. Much as the US is both in line with other developed nations on violent crime, and an outlier–with several cities more dangerous than anywhere in Europe or Asia–violent crime in America is as sprawling as the opportunities to commit crime.

https://www.criminaljusticedegreehub.com/violent-crime-us-abroad/