How Syria’s White Helmets became victims of an online propaganda machine

The Russia-backed campaign to link the volunteer rescuers with al-Qaida exposes how conspiracy theories take root: ‘It’s like a factory’

Source: How Syria’s White Helmets became victims of an online propaganda machine

In spite of this positive international recognition, there’s a counter-narrative pushed by a vocal network of individuals who write for alternative news sites countering the “MSM agenda”. Their views align with the positions of Syria and Russia and attract an enormous online audience, amplified by high-profile alt-right personalities, appearances on Russian state TV and an army of Twitter bots.

The way the Russian propaganda machine has targeted the White Helmets is a neat case study in the prevailing information wars. It exposes just how rumours, conspiracy theories and half-truths bubble to the top of YouTube, Google and Twitter search algorithms.

“This is the heart of Russian propaganda. In the old days they would try and portray the Soviet Union as a model society. Now it’s about confusing every issue with so many narratives that people can’t recognise the truth when they see it,” said David Patrikarakos, author of War in 140 Characters: How Social Media is Reshaping Conflict in the 21st Century.

End of the smashed phone screen? Self-healing glass discovered by accident

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New type of polymer glass that can mend itself when pressed together is in development by University of Tokyo after a student discovered it

Japanese researchers say they have developed a new type of glass that can heal itself from cracks and breaks.

Glass made from a low weight polymer called “polyether-thioureas” can heal breaks when pressed together by hand without the need for high heat to melt the material.

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Panthers’ Jerry Richardson’s exit from ownership ranks is a sign of the times

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The Panthers are 10-4 and a team no one wants to face in January, but they’ve lost an owner in an era where the old harassment game is no longer played

When one of the NFL’s most stable and respected owners is forced to sell his team the rest of sports should know there is no room for creepy comments, lurid stares and strange requests to come to the owner’s suite. The harassment game, long accepted with knowing smiles and smarmy smirks, has been shut down. As hashtags embolden women to talk about the dignity that has been stripped from their lives, there are plenty of players, coaches, executives and owners holding their breath wondering if past crimes will catch up to them.

Related: NFL round-up: Patriots shock Steelers at the death while Eagles keep winning

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Scientists have beaten down the best climate denial argument | Dana Nuccitelli

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Clouds don’t act as a climate thermostat, and they’re not going to save us from global warming

Climate deniers have come up with a lot of arguments about why we shouldn’t worry about global warming – about 200 of them – but most are quite poor, contradictory, and easily debunked by consulting the peer-reviewed scientific literature. The cleverest climate contrarians settle on the least implausible argument – that equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS – how much a doubling of the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will increase Earth’s surface temperature) is low, meaning that the planet will warm relatively slowly in response to human carbon pollution.

But they have to explain how that can be the case, because there are a lot of factors that amplify global warming. For example, a warmer atmosphere holds more water vapor, which is itself a greenhouse gas, adding further warming. Warming also melts ice, leaving Earth’s surface less reflective, absorbing more sunlight. There are a number of these amplifying ‘feedbacks,’ but few that would act to significantly slow global warming.

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Twitter under fire after suspending Egyptian journalist Wael Abbas

Abbas is blogger-in-chief for the website Misr Digit@l, which posted about the suspension, saying it involved the deletion of “over 250,000 tweets. Dozens of thousands of pictures, videos and live streams from the middle of every crisis in Egypt with date stamp on them, reporting on people who got tortured, killed or missing. Live coverage of events as they happened in the street.”

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Account of blogger and campaigner who has won awards for documenting human rights abuses shut down

Twitter has faced criticism after the account of a prominent Egyptian journalist and campaigner was suspended.

Wael Abbas wrote on Facebook that Twitter had sent “an email saying my account is suspended for an allotted time, which they did not specify, and for reasons they did not specify too”.

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ICYMI: Update on the latest in the Dolt45 Russian Probe

So where did the emails come from – GSA – and why were they provided? The guy who said he would bury them died before they are hidden. “Earlier this year, Trump appointed the top attorney at the office responsible for providing all the electronics and email accounts the Trump transition team used. That attorney’s name was Richard Backler.
Now, as background, Backler was a white collar criminal defense attorney before his appointment. He helped rich criminals beat government convictions for a firm with a name you’ll find familiar. Bracewell & Giuliani.
So, Trump appointed Backler and then Backler went and ensured Trump transition team attorneys that he would not allow his org (the GSA) to provide any of their emails to investigators. One problem: Backler fell ill and ultimately passed away.”

The Friday Night Dump came on Saturday.

And, it’s a doozy.

Scoop: Mueller obtains “tens of thousands” of Trump transition emails

Special Counsel Robert Mueller has obtained “many tens of thousands” of Trump transition emails, including emails of Jared Kushner, transition team sources tell Axios.

  • Trump officials discovered Mueller had the emails when his prosecutors used them as the basis for questions to witnesses, the sources said.

    The emails include 12 accounts, one of which contains about 7,000 emails, the sources said.

    The accounts include the team’s political leadership and the foreign-policy team, the sources said.

 

Why it matters: The transition emails are said to include sensitive exchanges on matters that include potential appointments, gossip about the views of particular senators involved in the confirmation process, speculation about vulnerabilities of Trump nominees, strategizing about press statements, and policy planning on everything from war to taxes.

“Mueller is using the emails to confirm things, and get new leads,” a transition source told me.

How it happened: The sources say Mueller obtained the emails from the General Services Administration, the government agency that hosted the transition email system, which had addresses ending in “ptt.gov,” for Presidential Transition Team.

Some back story Twitter tea on this:

 

From this Twitter Thread:

The Hoarse Whisperer‏ @HoarseWisperer

Settle in, politikids.

You’re going to enjoy this…

I’ve read the full letter Trump transition team attorneys sent to legislators re: Mueller obtaining their emails.

It has a delicious reveal.

1/

As we now know: 1) Mueller obtained ALL of the emails sent to/from Trump transition team accounts 2) The Trump gang only realized this after Mueller’s team seemed to know all about their emails 3) This made them quite… upset

4) Thier lawyers then wrote the letter in the link to congressmen complaining about just how upsetting all of this is. Here’s the classically amusing reveal in the letter…

Earlier this year, Trump appointed the top attorney at the office responsible for providing all the electronics and email accounts the Trump transition team used. That attorney’s name was Richard Backler.

Now, as background, Backler was a white collar criminal defense attorney before his appointment. He helped rich criminals beat government convictions for a firm with a name you’ll find familiar. Bracewell & Giuliani.

So, Trump appointed Backler and then Backler went and ensured Trump transition team attorneys that he would not allow his org (the GSA) to provide any of their emails to investigators. One problem: Backler fell ill and ultimately passed away.

So, until Mueller’s crew started asking Trump aides about those emails, they had absolutely no idea Mueller had them because they thought Trump’s guy on the inside was running interference for them. Let that one sink in.

Trump and his flunkies thought their friend at the GSA had locked their emails away *literally* in a vault no one could get to… They thought their bodies were all buried.

As a result, Trump’s people walked into their interviews with Mueller and team with a completely false sense of confidence that he didn’t know what he already knew in spades. They thought he was fishing. He was just reeling fish in.

Another Thread:

Renato Mariotti‏Verified account @renato_mariotti

THREAD: Why are Trump’s lawyers upset that Mueller obtained transition emails from a government agency? (Hint: They’re just playing politics, but this is a bad sign for them.)

3:03 PM – 16 Dec 2017

1/ Today @axios reported that Mueller obtained tens of thousands of emails from the General Services Administration, which possessed them.

2/ @axios reported that the emails included very frank discussions as well as emails from Jared Kushner. Trump’s team was unaware that Mueller possessed the emails and were surprised when Mueller’s team asked questions based on the emails.

3/ Now Trump’s team has written a letter to Congress, complaining that some of the materials were “susceptible to privilege claims.” So what does this mean?

4/ First of all, it’s not unusual at all for prosecutors to obtain emails from other parties. That’s extremely common in white collar criminal investigations and is not improper.

5/ What *is* unusual here is that Mueller obtained emails from GSA even though he could have obtained (many of) the same emails from lawyers for the Trump Transition.

6/ Typically, in a white collar case, prosecutors obtain as many emails and documents as possible from defense attorneys instead of from another source.

7/ That’s because the defense team would review the emails, take out the ones that are not relevant, sort the emails, and put them in a format could be useable by Mueller.

8/ When a prosecutor obtains emails from a third party, usually irrelevant emails aren’t sorted out. So why would Mueller get the emails from GSA instead?

9/ One reason comes to mind. Mueller was concerned that he wouldn’t receive all of the emails if he obtained them from the Trump team. That’s surprising and suggests that he has reason to distrust Trump’s team.

.@chrisgeidner spoke to a senior GSA lawyer, who said of the Trump transition team: “In using our devices,” transition team members were informed that materials “would not be held back in any law enforcement” actions.
“Therefore, no expectation of privacy can be assumed.” http://pic.twitter.com/D0uqNtgR9S

— Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand) December 17, 2017

Mueller just hauled in “thousands” of emails from the Mike Pence-led transition

It’s closing in on the VPhttps://t.co/HPqrs7xKOb http://pic.twitter.com/pH2WcRUhAs

— Shareblue Media (@Shareblue) December 17, 2017

YES!!

Folks,

We wonder why we haven’t seen hide not hair of Rudy ‘911’ in awhile.

It was his responsibility to take care of the email problem.

He did that by installing one of the partners of his firm into the head of the GSA.

But, the dude died, and didn’t bury the emails.

They, of course, don’t respect bureaucracy, so, there was nothing there but career staffers when Bobby Three Sticks came a knocking, and they followed the law.😄😄

What was left unsaid:

Bobby Three Sticks knew the answer to the questions he asked.

Can we say

LYING TO THE FBI, Boys and Girls?😄😄😄😄

One of the things that I am enjoying most?

We don’t find out anything about what Bobby Three Sticks is doing, until he wants us to. This happened MONTHS ago 😄

Louisiana activist buys land in path of proposed Bayou Bridge pipeline

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Julie Dermansky’s blog

With Tribal Blessing, Louisiana Activist Buys Land in Path of Proposed Bayou Bridge Pipeline

By Julie Dermansky • Sunday, December 17, 2017 – 19:51

On December 16 anti-pipeline activists calling themselves water protectors gathered in Rayne, Louisiana, on land located along the proposed route of the Bayou Bridge pipeline. The gathering occurred two days after 

Russia used a network of 150,000 Twitter accounts to meddle in Brexit

Theresa May and Vladimir PutinTheresa May and Vladimir Putin last year.AP

  • New data is the “most significant evidence yet” that Russia-backed social media accounts meddled in the Brexit referendum.
  • Over 150,000 Twitter accounts based in Russia tweeted about Brexit during the referendum campaign, an investigation has found.
  • Theresa May told Russian President Vladimir Putin that Britain “knows” what Russia is doing.


LONDON — Twitter accounts based in Russia posted 45,000 tweets about Brexit within the space of 48 hours during last year’s referendum on EU membership, an investigation commissioned by The Times has found.

Data scientists at the University of Swansea and University of California, Berkeley found that over 150,000 accounts based in Russia posted content relating to Brexit in the days leading up to voting day on June 23, 2016.

These accounts had previously focused on issues like Russia’s annexation of Crimea, before focusing their attention on the Brexit referendum, with the majority of tweets seen by the Times encouraging people to vote Leave.

A “massive number of Russian-related tweets was created a few days before the voting day, reached its peak during the voting and the result and then dropped immediately afterwards,” the paper to be released by researchers says.

“The main conclusion is that bots were used on purpose and had influence,” Tho Pam, one of the paper’s main authors, adds.

The Russian accounts were most active on the day of the referendum (Thursday, June 23) and following day (Friday, June 24) when the final result became clear. The accounts posted over 39,000 tweets on Friday, June 24.

Conservative MP Damian Collins, who chairs the digital, culture, media and sport select committee, said the research is “the most significant evidence yet of interference by Russia-backed social media accounts around the Brexit referendum.”

He added: “The content published and promoted by these accounts is clearly designed to increase tensions throughout the country and undermine our democratic process. I fear that this may well be just the tip of the iceberg.”

Researchers at the University of Edinburgh have identified 419 accounts operating from the Russian Internet Agency attempting to influence British politics, the Guardian reports

A Kremlin-linked account tweeted a bogus picture showing a Muslim woman ignoring victims of the Westminster bridge terrorist attack earlier this year. This picture was subsequently reported by The Sun and Mail Online. 

Russia tweet Westminster Bridge attackTwitter / @SouthLoneStar

Prime Minister Theresa May on Sunday used a speech to accuse Russia of using fake news to “sow discord” in the west and “meddle” in democratic processes.

“[Russia] is seeking to weaponise information. Deploying its state-run media organisations to plant fake stories and photo-shopped images in an attempt to sow discord in the West and undermine our institutions,” May said.

“So I have a very simple message for Russia. We know what you are doing. And you will not succeed. Because you underestimate the resilience of our democracies, the enduring attraction of free and open societies, and the commitment of Western nations to the alliances that bind us.”

MPs including Labour’s Chris Bryant and Ben Bradshaw have repeatedly urged the UK government to up its investigation into the level of Russian interference in the EU referendum.

A spokesperson for Theresa May told Business Insider on Tuesday that the while the UK government had seen “no evidence of successful direct interference in UK democratic processes,” they were taking “all the necessary steps to make sure we have the right protections in place and that our democratic processes aren’t interfered with.”

Hack attack

Drax Power Station, North Yorkshire, EnglandDeborah Benbrook / Shutterstock

National Cyber Security Centre chief Ciaran Martin will today confirm that Russia hacked Britain’s energy grid and its agents have tried to penetrate British telecommunications services, such as BT.

It is believed Russian hackers successfully hijacked Britain’s energy network this summer and intended to leave dormant in there which will disrupt the network at a later date.

Martin is expected to say: “I can’t get into precise details of intelligence matters.

“But I can confirm that Russian interference, seen by the National Cyber Security Centre over the past year, has included attacks on the UK media, telecommunication and energy sectors.”

Den Originalartikel gibt es auf Business Insider UK. Copyright 2017. Und ihr könnt Business Insider UK auf Twitter folgen.