A Cambridge Analytica Whistle Blower Speaks

[toucana]

Let’s see :

The president of the USA is being sued by a porn star called ‘Stormy’ over an NDA intended to silence her from speaking out about a sexual relationship she had with him before the election. The pay-off was funnelled through a shell-company in a manner that almost certainly breached federal election expenditure disclosure rules. The first lady has walked out of the White House in a dudgeon in consequence.

The president is the direct target of a major ongoing criminal investigation into charges of treason, espionage, money-laundering and obstruction of justice - an investigation that has so far yielded 19 indictments and four guilty pleas. His own chief lawyer Tom Dowd has just thrown up his brief and walked off the job and is likely to be replaced by a wing-nut from Fox News who wants to argue that the president is being framed by the FBI.

The president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner who was recently stripped of his TS/SCI clearances has just been outed by the Crown prince of Saudi Arabia as “being in his pocket” and ready to supply any or all the crown jewels of US intelligence he can lay his hands on to the highest bidder in a desperate ‘pay to play’ scheme bid to refinance the Kushner family albatross at 666 Fifth Avenue, before it bankrupts him and sends him to jail for fraud (like his father before him).

In spite of all warnings to the contrary from his own NS team (big cue card note saying DO NOT CONGRATULATE), Donald Trump went right ahead and solemnly congratulated Russian president Vladimir Putin on his recent election ‘win’, and did so just a matter of days after Putin’s intelligence service launched the first ever known assassination attack on British soil using a banned class-G nerve gas agent. The National Security Adviser General H.R McMaster has just now resigned and will be replaced by another wing-nut from Fox news.

The president just destabilised financial markets around the world by announcing $50 billion worth of unilateral trade tariff sanctions against China. (His chief economic advisor Gary Cohn walked out the week before last).

And all of that is just this week’s news ! - And I’m apparently being called ‘delusional’ for having the temerity to suggest that these events may be somewhat unusual, and worthy of more detailed attention ?

[TheVat]

Bolton isn't just a wingnut. He's a dangerous super-hawk who thinks war is the answer to any foreign policy problem. If Someguy would really like to observe "batshit insane," Bolton would be a good textbook case. This is a guy that prompted
Christopher Preble, the vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute to say,
“I operate on the assumption that John Bolton should be kept as far away from the levers of foreign policy as possible. I think I would rest easy if he was dog catcher in Stone Mountain, Georgia. But maybe not.”

What is fascinatingly delusional is this notion that some people have that Trump is somehow an innocent being smeared by partisans.

[BadgerJelly]

Biv -

What is fascinatingly delusional is this notion that some people have that Trump is somehow an innocent being smeared by partisans.

It is that.

The problem is the machine of spin. When the opponents of Trump use every little piece of information to their "smear" campaign they detract from the serious issues. Trump and co realise this and so play on it.

Same thing with the whole Russian poisoning. It was fairly obvious what the response from Russia would be, and given the hysterical propaganda such reversals on the narrative, and reflection of blame, work far more than I imagine they'd used to.

This is why I was speaking so strongly a month or two ago. I don't think it helps to get wrapped up in this or that theory too much - but we're fascinated by such cloak and dagger news stories and such scandals that we're always going to be partially drawn to such news items. I am not saying we should ignore these stories, but that I think, truly and strongly, that more use is made of attacking and dissecting the disembodied policies rather than focusing on the person making the policies too much.

We're going to be struggling with the effect of the internet for the rest of this century, and beyond, I expect. I find the sensationalism of information talked about as "weaponry" to be utterly farcical. If that is the case then the new "weapons dealers" are the advertising companies.

I'd only really be worried if people started trying to spray oxytocin into my face prior to trying to get me to vote for them or buy some product - no doubt there is likely some conspiracy out there about oxytocin in the water supply or some such nonsense.

[BadgerJelly]

Mark Zuckerberg: “I’m really sorry that this happened”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6DOhioBfyY

Kind of funny to here ... "if you'd have told me in 2004 that ..."

Duh??? Strange how I was talking about this kind of thing with my friends when facebook first came out before I'd even read 1984.

Maybe he was more concerned with making money I guess. Still ... I think to say the thought never crossed his mind either shows he's mind boggling naïve or lying to protect his business.

[toucana]

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is due to make a major public announcement later today at 10 a.m EDT according to press advisory notices released by Politico and MSNBC reporters.

https://twitter.com/ericgeller/status/976940479597219840

https://twitter.com/JoyceWhiteVance/status/976995310391169035

It is billed as a multi-bureau briefing that will make a "major announcement on cyber security law enforcement".

DAG Rosenstein will be accompanied by:
Treasury Undersecretary For Terrorism & Financial Security - Sigal Mandelker
Assistant Attorney General - John C. Demers
US Attorney Geoffrey S. Bermann - For the Southern District New York
FBI Deputy Director - David L. Bowditch
FBI Assistant Director in Charge - William F. Sweeney Jnr.

The fact that DAG Rosenstein rather than his boss AG Sessions will be heading up the presentation indicates that the announcement relates to the Trump-Russia investigation. (Sessions has recused himself from all Russia related enquiries).

The involvement of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York suggests that at least one of the culprits was operating out of New York City where Grand juries for SC Robert Mueller have also been operating. The involvement of the Treasury Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence gives away that this is some kind of international financial crime involving hackers.

Several sources including Wikileaks suggest that indictments will be presented against a number of foreign state sponsored hackers involved in cyber attacks on US election-related servers and voter databases.

[toucana]

The 10 a.m. briefing by DAG Rosenstein has turned out be the announcement of the in absentia indictment of 9 state sponsored Iranian hackers responsible for infiltrating and attacking hundreds of academic, corporate and US government agency websites.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-live-deputy-ag-rosenstein-expected-to-make-major-cyber-law-enforcement-announcement

The targets of the indictments are unlikely ever to be brought in front of American courts (rather like 13 Russian hackers formally indicted a couple of weeks ago on similar charges).

All of the accused are associated with the Mabna Institute, an Iranian company that since at least 2013 has contracted with the Iranian government to conduct hacking.

[Event Horizon]

Police are conducting a raid on CA premises just 1 hour after getting the warrant signed. About 75 or so police of various flavours are believed to be searching computers, data, paperwork and presumably any other tit-bits they turn up.

[toucana]

Two and a half years down the line, the role of Cambridge Analytica during the 2016 Trump campaign is once more firmly back in the spotlight. Britain’s Channel 4 news has published a new exposé based on a colossal data leak of 200 million US voter profiles that were in the possession of Cambridge Analytica at the time.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIf5ELaOjOk

Donald Trump’s 2016 US presidential election campaign has been accused of actively seeking to deter 3.5 million black Americans in battleground states from voting by deliberately targeting them with negative Hillary Clinton ads on Facebook.

The secret effort concentrated on 16 swing states, several narrowly won by Trump after the black Democrat vote collapsed.

The claims have come from an investigation by Channel 4 News, which was leaked a copy of a vast election database it says was used by the Trump campaign in 2016.

Comprising the records of 198 million Americans, and containing details about their domestic and economic status acquired from market research firms, the investigation claimed voters were segmented into eight categories.

One was marked “deterrence”. Those placed in the special category – voters thought likely to vote for Clinton or not at all – were disproportionately black.

It is estimated that 2 million black voters across the US who voted for Barack Obama in 2012 did not turn out for Hillary Clinton. In Wisconsin, Trump’s vote matched Mitt Romney’s in 2012, but Clinton lost because her vote collapsed. The Democrat polled 230,000 votes fewer than Obama.

Key to the Trump victory was putting off black voters in cities like Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In one city ward, where 80% of its 1,440 voters were black, almost half or 44% of the ward was marked as for deterrence, a total of 636 people, 90% of whom were black.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/28/trump-2016-campaign-targeted-35m-black-americans-to-deter-them-from-voting

By an odd coincidence, Brad Parscale who was the Trump campaign data director in 2016 has just been arrested by Fort Lauderdale police, and put into protective custody after barricading himself inside his house with an arsenal of guns and threatening to commit suicide, according to his wife.

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/28/politics/brad-parscale-hospitalized/index.html

Parscale who became president Trump’s 2020 campaign manager was demoted and sidelined after the disastrous June Trump campaign rally in Tulsa Oklahoma, when Parscale was blamed for both the low turnout and a sharp decline in Trump’s polling support numbers.

[Serpent]

If you can't take a little roll under a bus, don't enlist to drive one owned by Trump.