cherry-picking select

disambig see kernel of truth

see shillenberger lomborg

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CONTEXT?

AN 10 26

On Wednesday, it was revealed that under the leadership of President Donald Trump, the FBI has embraced a novel solution to making it appear as if its violent crime arrests are up: “juice the stats.” This is according to a new report by MS NOW, which found that the crime numbers touted by FBI Director Kash Patel are padded with arrests made by state and local law enforcement rather than the bureau.

“With fewer agents and a strained budget, the FBI under its director, Kash Patel, has brought thousands fewer criminal cases than previous administrations,” reports MS NOW, citing a review of Justice Department data. “The findings rebut Patel’s repeated claims that he has led a crackdown on violent crime. Patel has boasted that the FBI has arrested 54,000 violent criminals, which he describes as a 90 percent increase in arrests from the same period in the Biden administration. What he doesn’t mention is that his count is inflated by including arrests that state and local police forces and other federal agencies have made when an FBI employee is present.” And as the FBI itself acknowledged, many were not FBI cases.

In fact, data shows that the FBI has referred 15 percent fewer criminal cases for federal prosecution during Trump’s second term than during the same period in the Biden administration. And, while the FBI does not break down its criminal referrals into types of cases, the data also shows that the DOJ prosecuted 15 percent fewer cases of violent crimes during the first 16 months of the Trump administration than during the same period of the Biden administration.

According to MS NOW, “There were nearly 3,800 fewer people charged federally with violent crimes during the first part of the second Trump administration than during the comparable Biden period — the opposite of what Patel says. That figure includes cases referred from all federal agencies, not just the FBI.” The report is based on public DOJ data obtained and shared by Justice Connection, a group of former DOJ and FBI employees who have accused the administration of weaponizing the department to pursue Trump’s political ends.

The drop in criminal cases has corresponded with a “huge” increase in focus on immigration crimes per Patel’s demand. According to MS NOW, “Since the 9/11 attacks, the FBI’s priority mission has been stopping terrorism. The bureau is also devoted to hunting foreign spies, ferreting out political corruption and white collar fraud, and disrupting complex criminal schemes and organized crime.” The shift to emphasizing immigration enforcement along with the juiced stats represents a major change in the FBI’s function and transparency.

“Kash Patel is actively dismantling decades of statistical integrity just to feed a political narrative,” said Christopher O’Leary, a former senior FBI official and MS NOW contributor. “We are seeing a historic institution reduced to a metrics game, where the FBI is poaching credit for arrests made by other law enforcement agencies and departments. This artificial inflation of the stats is a deliberate smoke screen designed to mask internal chaos and the mass exodus of experienced talent by manufacturing an illusion of productivity that simply does not exist on the ground.”

In a statement to MS NOW, the FBI did not dispute the data showing a reduction in criminal referrals, but it pointed to the declining rate of violent crime. But as MS NOW explains, “That decline has been a nationwide trend for several years after crime briefly spiked during the Covid-19 pandemic from 2020 to 2022. It’s been steadily declining ever since.” And while Patel has claimed a 90 percent increase in “violent crime arrests” by the FBI, this ignores crucial context: “that Patel is taking credit for the work of other agencies.”

“By Patel newly including state and local arrests, as well as arrests by other federal agencies, his FBI progress report radically changes the way the FBI counts its cases to include work the FBI did not do,” MS NOW elaborates. “The FBI has not previously counted other agency arrests as part of its caseload, according to internal DOJ data and the accounts of current and former officials. There is no way to say how many of the local police arrests — which Patel now claims credit for — would have been made regardless of the FBI’s presence.” The FBI asserts that the numbers have always been tallied that way, but that is false, multiple former FBI officials told MS NOW. Former FBI agent Daniel Brunner said the FBI previously always resisted counting state and local arrests as FBI achievements. “It’s never been done,” he said. “And when agents attempted to do it, it was always pushed back on at the local division. Headquarters did not want false numbers, they wanted the truth from the field.”

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public citizen foxic

Fox Fallacies and Tricks

In addition to these partisan signals, Fox News Network employed a number of other false arguments and tricks to keep climate denial and doubt alive during an era when climate catastrophe is becoming increasingly apparent to Americans.

Ad Hominem Attacks

In the past six months, those who advocate climate action have been subjected to personal attack by Fox News hosts.

U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) has served as a regular punching bag for Fox News hosts and their guests. In one exchange between Sean Hannity and former Democratic National Committee Chair Donna Brazile, she jabs the network for its obsession with AOC, joking that programs have mentioned ”AOC well over 3,000 times.” For Ocasio-Cortez’s acknowledgment of the climate crisis and support for the Green New Deal, Fox News has accused her of “capitalizing on a fear” and “pushing doom and gloom day and night.” She’s been called a “radical nut job”, “Scary-o-Cortez” and “dumb and totally ignorant of everything.”

While Ocasio-Cortez is by far the most vilified and attacked climate advocate, she is not the only one. Another example is provided by science communicator Bill Nye. After appearing on John Oliver’s HBO program, “Last Week Tonight,” Nye was Hannity’s “Villain of the Day.” A guest on “The Ingraham Angle” suggested that calling Bill Nye a scientist was akin to referring to “George Clooney as a doctor or Harrison Ford as an archaeologist.” Tucker Carlson suggested that Nye’s appearance was just a stunt to get his own Netflix series.

Red Herring

A favorite distraction tactic used by Fox News hosts is to pivot any discussion about warming to the “hypocrisy” of “elites” and “liberals” who advocate climate solutions. The argument is that, if climate change is an existential crisis, then climate advocates would reduce their own carbon footprints to zero. But because climate champions like U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) fly on private jets and Ocasio-Cortez uses Uber instead of public transportation, the crisis must not be real or very urgent.

The hypocrisy argument takes many forms, but on at least 11 occasions in the past six months, Fox News hosts have referenced the use of air travel to discredit those concerned about climate or to question the reality of human-induced warming, like this example from Tucker Carlson on January 14:

Elites love to impose gas taxes on everyone else while flying private to conferences in Switzerland, where they worry about melting ice caps. That’s obviously a scam. Let’s just be honest about it.

Whether or not driving or using other forms of private transportation is hypocrisy is not the point. In reality, while individual action on climate is important, it is wholly inadequate for addressing the scale of the climate crisis. The crisis requires, above all, systemic policy responses that can be implemented only by governments.

Slippery Slope

Another oft-repeated argument directed at climate scientists is that “they have been wrong before, so they must be wrong now.” The most common version of this argument is the myth that climate scientists predicted in the 1970s that there would be a dramatic period of global cooling. As Sean Hannity said in a typical segment, “Look at that, the big freeze, the next Ice Age is coming.” That’s what they told us in the ’70s. That then evolved into, uh-oh, the world has a fever, as Al Gore said and scaring people.” The reality is that a small pocket of scientists suggested the Earth could enter a new ice age in the next few centuries. At the time, 62% of climate scientists predicted warming. Forty years of observation and analysis have brought that number up to 97% of climate scientists agreeing that human beings are causing global warming.

In the past six months, Fox News has not once referenced the scientific consensus around the climate crisis. According to recent polling, one in four Americans (25%) think there is a lot of disagreement among scientists about whether or not global warming is happening, and a mere 17% understand that there is a scientific consensus that human-caused global warming is happening. This lack of public understanding cannot be pinned solely on Fox News, but the media plays a role in public perception and understanding of issues. And no other major media outlet is pushing out climate doubt, to so many viewers, as often as Fox News.

Cherry-picking// alarmism

Frequently during the first half of 2019, Fox News hosts latched on to singular comments by Democratic politicians and what they deemed to be extreme responses to the climate crisis. These topics were brought up and mocked repeatedly in an attempt to deny the climate crisis, discredit policymakers and vilify climate policy.

The most common use of this tactic is the repetitive mention and mocking of Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s claim that “the world is going to end in 12 years if we do not address climate change” (a claim she later deemed “dry humor + sarcasm”). The comment was made in reference to the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C, which asserts that global temperature warming will likely reach 1.5°C by the year 2030.

Fox News hosts referenced Ocasio-Cortez’s world-ending comment 56 times in the first six months of 2019. Out of 56 references, the IPCC report was mentioned only five times. On only two occasions did the network discuss the staggering conclusions of the report that informed Ocasio-Cortez’s remarks. A premade video segment from correspondent Peter Doocy identified that the report “doesn’t call for the end of the world in 12 years, but rather irreversible damage to the planet in a decade if emissions aren’t quickly curbed” and was aired on two seperate programs immediately following Ocasio-Cortez’s comment.

The video clip of Ocasio-Cortez’s claim was played eight times during the remainder of January and continued to be replayed 12 more times, with the last showing on June 4.

Sixteen references to the world ending in 12 years did not reference Ocasio-Cortez. These mentions were used to mock advocates of climate policy, deny the climate crisis and criticize Democrats’ attempts to enact climate policy.

Fox News Climate “CON”tributors

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Who are 3%

...Moreover, the 2 per cent of peer-reviewed papers that reject AGW actually provide additional evidence in favor of the climate change consensus (Benestad et al.

Reference Benestad2016). Closer examination of thirty-eight papers that refute the 97 per cent consensus reveals all to have flaws rendering their conclusions invalid. The main errors identified were all related to the way the authors tested the data. As Dana Nuccitelli (Reference Nuccitelli2015, para. 10) describes: “the 2–3 per cent of papers that reject that consensus are all over the map, even contradicting each other. The one thing they seem to have in common is methodological flaws like cherry picking, curve fitting, ignoring inconvenient data, and disregarding known physics.” Additionally, co-author Katharine Hayhoe found: “Every single one of those analyses had an error—in their assumptions, methodology, or analysis—that, when corrected, brought their results into line with the scientific consensus” (Foley Reference Foley2017, para. 5).

Several authors of flawed anti-consensus papers also authored books on the same topic (Dunlap and Jacques Reference Dunlap and Jacques2013). Like the articles, Dunlap and Jacques asserted, these books help bolster claims that reject the climate change consensus. Of all books evaluated, the majority were linked to conservative think tanks; most were also affiliated with conservative ideology. These connections help illustrate the “the strong link between conservatism and promotion of climate change denial” (Dunlap and Jacques Reference Dunlap and Jacques2013, 707; see also Jacques et al. Reference Jacques2008; McCright and Dunlap Reference McCright and Dunlap2011a; McCright et al. Reference McCright2016).

The link between these publications and conservative think tanks/ideology is important since the“climate change counter-movement (CCCM)” is rooted in conservative (and, subsequently, conservative think-tank) efforts (Brulle Reference Brulle2014, 682). The CCCM's progress, however, requires significant corporate funding, political support, and magnification via the media and others who serve to profit from their efforts (Brulle Reference Brulle2014). In other words, while only a small number of expert scientists reject climate change consensus, there is a much more complex web of individuals and organizations that make up, and work to promote, contrarian efforts that use these expert and non-expert rejections to bolster their claims....

Table 7 shows authors of the aforementioned publications who appeared in our sample. We also note who meets climate expert criteria. Collectively, these publications illustrate one waya small, yet prominent, cohort works to expand the contrarian movement through the guise of academic research.

...[table]

Affiliations

A total of 82 per cent of all individuals in our dataset, including 100 per cent of individuals deemed climate experts, have affiliations with industries and/or organizations involved in the CCCM(Björnberg et al. Reference Björnberg2017; Brulle Reference Brulle2014; Dunlap and Jacques Reference Dunlap and Jacques2013; McCright and Dunlap Reference McCright and Dunlap2011a; McCright et al. Reference McCright2016; Oreskes and Conway Reference Oreskes and Conway2010; Plehwe Reference Plehwe2014). Of the 82 per cent, we found: (1) 69 per cent have affiliation(s) with conservative think tanks, conservative religious groups, and/or organized causes dedicated to the rejection of the climate consensus;(2) 11 per cent have affiliation(s) with both think tanks/groups/causes and CCCM-related industries (for example, fossil fuel, mining, and utility companies); and (3) another 2 per cent have affiliation(s) just with CCCM-related industries.

:{:{}:

Table 8 shows the number of affiliations with CCCM organizations that appeared in our data. Table 9 shows industry affiliations. Each corporation/company appeared just once, with the exceptions of ExxonMobil (seven), Peabody (four), Shell (four), and Western Fuels Association (three). Evaluating these companies/corporations is beyond the scope of this article; however, like other demographic information and affiliations, these affiliations may provide insight into contrarians' background and views. [i really want this table 8]

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https://mahb.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/America_Misled.pdf

supran oreskes

Contradictory contrarianism The most common denialist arguments have been shown to contain fatal assumptions or fallacies26. Climate deniers do not offer any rational explanation for why our climate is changing. Rather, denialist arguments are incoherent and often contradictory27. For example, deniers will seize on snowfall to claim that global warming is a hoax, while at the same time claiming that an extreme event such as a drought or wildfire cannot be attributed to climate change. This is incoherent because either extreme events can be a signal of climate change or they cannot be. Climate denial lacks consistency because it is not about scientific evidence—it is about how to continue business as usual in the face of climate disruption. Climate deniers reject climate science because they are averse to proposed or perceived solutions to climate change28.

...

Common Fallacies

Climate denial arguments can be summarized by the five techniques of science denial (summarized with the acronym FLICC): fake experts, logical fallacies, impossible expectation, cherry picking, and conspiracy theories29,30.

Fake Experts Logical Fallacies Impossible Expectations Cherry Picking Conspiracy Theories

Promoting dissenting non-experts as highly qualified while not having published any actual climate research and/or received any relevant education. Logically flawed arguments that lead to false conclusions. Common logical fallacies are red herrings, non sequiturs, and false dichotomies. Demanding unrealistic standards of certainty before acting on the science. A technique practised by the tobacco industry. Selectively choosing data that supports a desired conclusion that differs from the conclusion arising from all the available data32. Proposing a secret plan among a number of people, generally to implement a nefarious scheme such as conspiring to hide a truth or perpetuate misinformation. Climate deniers are more likely to be conspiracy theorists33

nice graphics throughout eg]

Deconstructing Denial

:{:{Figure 7 shows deconstructions of some of the most common myths about climate change. Determining the misleading techniques of a climate myth requires outlining the argument structure: listing any premises (starting assumptions) and the conclusion. This allows one to ascertain whether any premises are false, and/or whether the argument is logically invalid. Figure 7: Deconstruction of common climate myths. MYTH “Cold weather disproves global warming.”}:

Premise 1 CHERRY PICKING IMPOSSIBLE EXPECTATIONS Some place is cold. Premise 2 No place can experience cold during global warming. Conclusion Global warming isn’t happening. Cherry Picking: Ignores that most of the globe is warm. Impossible Expectations: Global warming doesn’t mean cold events don’t happen, just that they’re less likely to happen. MYTH “Global warming stopped in 1998.” SLOTHFUL INDUCTION CHERRY PICKING Premise 1 The temperature trend since 1998 is statistically insignificant. Conclusion Global warming isn’t happening. Slothful Induction: Ignores other temperature records and measures of heat imbalance showing a significant warming trend. Cherry Picking: Trends over short periods do not lead to conclusions about }:

...

Conclusion Disinformation about climate change has a straightforward purpose—to block action on climate change. In America, it has largely succeeded, with policies to mitigate climate change stymied or delayed for decades. Meanwhile, climate change has intensified, causing impacts such as intensified extreme weather events, rising sea level, harmful effects on human health, and much more. Climate denial has seriously hurt the American people. The damage, deaths, and harm to people will continue to worsen if we don’t expose and discredit denial. This is not the first time that corporations prioritizing profits over people have caused great harm. The tobacco industry spent hundreds of millions of dollars disinforming the public about the health impacts of smoking in order to undermine tobacco control34,35. The World Health Organization estimates that six million people die every year from preventable tobaccocaused disease. Drawing on the tobacco industry’s playbook, fossil fuel companies have done the same on climate change, spending hundreds of millions of dollars confusing the public and delaying life-saving action. Their legacy is the death, destruction, and injustices of irreversible global warming. Big Oil is the new Big Tobacco.

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https://www.ecowatch.com/amazon-rainforest-fire-invisible-damage-2647014608.html

Martin Kuebler

2020 is shaping up to be another destructive year for the Amazon rainforest in Brazil. Deforestation— a grim precursor to the fires used to clear the land for development — has increased significantly, according to observers. And many experts fear the region could see a repeat of the destructive wildfires of last August and September.

Satellite data released by Brazil's National Institute for Space Research (INPE) on August 1 showed more than 6,800 fires across the Amazon region in July, an increase of 28% compared with last year. And it's still early — August is generally considered to be the start of the fire season, which typically hits during drier months. More than 10,000 fires were recorded in the first 10 days of this month, up 17% from the same period last year, according to INPE.

Last year's deforestation toll on the world's biggest rainforest — 60% of which is in Brazil — was an estimated 10,000 square kilometers (3,800 square miles), roughly the size of Lebanon. That's the highest level since 2008,according to INPE. With increased deforestation comes a greater risk of wildfires, since many of the those that ravaged the rainforest last year spread from land being cleared for illegal mining, agriculture and cattle ranching.

Degradation Below the Canopy

President Jair Bolsonaro — who has repeatedly called for more of the Amazon region to be cleared for economic development — disputed the recent fire data in a speech to other South American leaders on August 11.

"Tropical rainforest doesn't catch fire. So this story that the Amazon is burning is a lie, and we have to fight it with real numbers," he told the meeting of the Leticia Pact, a group launched last year to protect the rainforest.

Bolsonaro challenged the leaders to fly over the rainforest from Boa Vista to Manaus, a distance of some 750 kilometers (460 miles), and see for themselves. "They won't find any spot of fire, nor a quarter of a hectare deforested," he said.

While these forests may still appear untouched when viewed from above, the green landscape seen from a plane or satellite can be deceptive. A typical wildfire burning through the understory — the vegetation growing beneath the forest's main canopy — of a virgin rainforest can wipe out small shrubs, plants and between 40 to 50% of all trees.

"A considerable part of the Amazon forest has been consecutively degraded, and it's invisible to our eyes," said Ane Alencar, director of science at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM), a Brazilian non-governmental organization. "In fact, the quality of these forests has been degraded due to these forest fires."

When much of the undergrowth and smaller trees are eliminated, it makes it difficult to maintain the moist understory microclimate that helps protect rainforests from fires.These microclimates are already suffering, with the average temperature in the Amazon basin having risen by at least 0.5 degrees Celsius (0.9 degrees Fahrenheit) since 1980, according to climate data from USAID. The dry season has become longer and severe droughts are now more frequent, with three reported since 2005.

The damage doesn't end with the initial blaze, either. Larger trees, which may be harmed in a fire but survive thanks to the moist environment, could finally succumb to the trauma years later."Initially, it's the small trees which die because they are most vulnerable to the heat stress, but over time it's actually the larger trees which die and fall over, taking with them many other trees," said Jos Barlow, a British conservation science professor who has worked in Brazil since 1998.

"This opens up additional gaps in the canopy, allowing sunlight to reach the understory and further dry it out."

The recovery of mycorrhizal networks — underground systems of soil fungi that help trees to exchange nutrients and water — after a wildfire is still unclear and a subject of research, though it's known that the uppermost layer of very fine roots also suffers in the initial blaze. Some studies, including a 2017 article in *Fire Ecology*, have suggested that the "resiliency of soil fungi likely contributes to the overall rapid ecosystem recovery following fire." For forest ecosystems, however, rapid can still mean several decades, according to a 2019 report in the journal Science Advances — at the earliest.

Wildfires Increasing in Recent Years

Another danger, said Barlow, is that more and more fires are reigniting areas already damaged by fire, particularly along the edges of the rainforest near new roads, clear-cut fields and pastures, both legal and illegal. This could permanently change the landscape.

"If you have recurrent fires of two or three burns, then you move into an alternative ecosystem where you have almost no large [trees] at all, dominated by scrubby species and bamboo and grasses," said Barlow.

Paulo Massoca, a Brazilian researcher and doctoral candidate at Indiana University Bloomington studying rainforest regrowth, said recurrent fires act as a sort of "filter," gradually eliminating plants that are not adapted to frequent fires and selecting the most resistant species, leaving "a fraction of the whole pool of plants in the region."

"After repeated burnings, soils get impoverished, plants grow slower, and vines/lianas and other non-woody plants, in addition to trees, settle in the area," he told DW, adding that this wide-ranging change in the ecosystem "slows and hinders the capacity of secondary forests damaged by repeated fire events to grow back and accumulate carbon."

It doesn't help that the Amazon soil, already poor, loses even more valuable nutrients after a fire. In a rainforest, the nutrients provided by dead organic matter are quickly reabsorbed by living plant life, leaving little on the ground.

"Burnings both kill the plants that sustain the topsoil and eliminate the topsoil that supports the plants," said Massoca. "Fires immediately release the nutrients and carbon stored in the topsoil, which are either washed out after the first rain or released to the atmosphere."

Those suspended soot particles in the vast clouds of smoke then billow up over healthy forests, potentially affecting cloud formation and rainfall patterns, according to Divino Vicente Silverio, a biologist at the Amazon Rural Federal University in Belem, northern Brazil.

In an August 2019 interview with *Nature* magazine, he said this atmospheric aerosol burden could lead to changes in how forests cycle water, creating drier conditions and disrupting weather patterns in the Amazon and even farther afield.

'There Are No Natural Fires in the Amazon'

Nearly all the fires in the Amazon can be linked to human activity. Trees cleared to make way for economic development are cut down and left to dry and then set alight — a technique known as slash and burn. Additional fires are set to eliminate weeds from existing pastures and clear out old agricultural areas. And, as happened in 2019, those fires can spread to surrounding forests.

"There are no natural fires in the Amazon," said Alencar of IPAM. "Even if it's very, very dry, we need to have somebody using the match."

Faced with criticism over the government response to the 2019 fires, President Bolsonaro has banned agricultural burning in the Amazon forest and Pantanal wetlands until November, the end of the dry season, and deployed troops to prevent illegal deforestation.

In his speech at the meeting of the Leticia Pact last week he said the government efforts had been effective, pointing out that forest clearances had dropped in July by more than 25% when compared with July 2019, the first decline in 15 months.

"We are making big, enormous efforts to fight fires and deforestation, but even so, we are criticized," he said.

Experts, however, have accused Bolsonaro of cherry-picking the data. INPE says deforestation increased by 25% year-on-year in the first half of the year, and that at least 3,000 square kilometers (1,200 square miles) had been cut down by June. Alencar said if the current rate continues, 2020 would be Brazil's worst year for deforestation in more than a decade.

In states with historically high deforestation rates — Mato Grosso, Para and Rondonia — the number of fires detected so far in 2020 is already higher than in the same period in 2019. Alencar said the increase so early in the season shows that the government response has been ineffective — and she believes it's already too late.

"For this fire season, it seems that we lost the battle against deforestation," she told DW. "We had two days, July 30 and August 1 … with more than 1,000 hot pixels, which are a measurement of fire activity in the region. And those were very high for that period."

Added to that are NASA observations that show a potentially active Atlantic hurricane season, like 2005 and 2010, which contributed to major drought in the southwestern Amazon as storms sucked moisture from the forest.

"They are predicting that it's likely to have the same pattern happening this year, which is going to be catastrophic if it's true," said Alencar.

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escalator, activ meas

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/how-trump-is-once-again-colluding-with-russia/

no lnx twt

how Trump is once again colluding with Russia

Written by Nancy LeTourneau / Washington Monthly August 14, 2020

Almost two weeks ago, a story circulated that Portland protesters were burning Bibles and American flags. It spread via social media and was picked up by conservative outlets, such as the Washington Examiner. Of course, several Republican leaders joined the bandwagon.

tp kirk --> djt jr?]

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ted cruzretweet: This is who they are.

Ian Miles Cheong

@stillgray

Left-wing activists bring a stack of Bibles to burn in front of the federal courthouse in Portland. https://twitter.com/Shelldrayk/status/1289481822414413827/video/1

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don jr

Now we move to the book burning phase. I’m pretty sure ANTIFA doesn’t actually stand for what they say it stands for. Maybe just remove the anti part of them name and it’s perfect.

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tpkirk

BLM inc arsonists just burned a stack of Bibles in Portland

The activist media won’t report on this because it’s likely they support it

Our faith is under attack.

If you vote for Biden—you vote for Bible burnings

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Two reporters at the New York Times, Matthew Rosenberg and Julian Barnes, decided to look into the story and found Vladimir Putin’s fingerprints all over it. As is often the case with effective propaganda, this story contains a kernel of truth. Apparently, some group was handing out Bibles to protesters that night and one of them was used to start a fire. An American flag was also burned. But a local paper covering the protests that night devoted just one sentence to that story in a lengthy piece about what happened.

The video news agency connected to Russia Today (RT) was regularly streaming a live feed of the Portland protests. They edited the clip of the fire and made it the focal point of their protest coverage that night. Then, RT did an entire story about it. Social media took it from there and the next thing you know, outlets like the Washington Examiner were picking it up. Here is how Rosenberg and Barnes summarized the process:

The Russian technique is a kind of information laundering, akin to money laundering.Stories originate with Russian-backed news sites, some of them directly connected to Moscow’s spy agencies, officials and experts said. They are then picked up by Americans on social media or in domestic news outlets, and their origins quickly become obscured. Often, by the time a story reaches most of its American audience, there is little to indicate that it was created to fuel grievances and deepen political divisions.

Following Trump’s press briefing on Wednesday, Hunter Walker tracked down another example of Russia’s attempt to get their propaganda in the news. He wrote about the question OAN reporter Chanel Rion asked the president.

Rion: In the last hour or so, if you googled antifa.com. it would take you straight to Joe Biden’s website, his official campaign website. Odd situation. We don’t know who’s behind that. But it raises an interesting leadership question. Should Joe Biden, the Democrat party, Kamala Harris– should they publicly denounce the Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization?

Trump: They should. I think they’re afraid to. It’s– in my book it’s virtually a part of their campaign, Antifa. The Democrats act like, gee, I don’t know exactly what that is.

Take a look at Portland. Take a look at any place you want to take a look at, and they’re all over the place. They were here. [DC?]

Basically Rion gave Trump the opportunity to claim that Antifa is part of the Biden campaign—which is, of course, a blatant lie.

Walker looked into what actually happened with the antifa.com website. Once again, as Pelosi said, “all roads lead to Putin.”

:{:{}:

Records for “antifa.com” in the domain name database Whoisology.com show the site was registered in the Russian Federation from 2013 through last July.Starting last November, the site’s registration was moved to Panama, The website has always been anonymously registered and its owners could not be reached for comment.

Russia set up the antifa.com website and eventually redirected it to Biden’s campaign page, allowing the president to claim that the group was involved politically with Democrats. Of course, this raises the old question of whether this was all coordinated with the president or if Trump is simply taking advantage of Putin’s efforts. The same questions are raised about the role of OAN in these kinds of Russian propaganda efforts.

So there you have two examples of how Russia is currently interfering in the 2020 election to support the reelection of Donald Trump. One thing worth noting is that if these examples are reflective of their efforts, Vladimir Putin has calculated that his best bet is to inflame the so-called “culture wars,” something that has been the bedrock of the Republican strategy for decades. The Bible burning story was especially useful for the Christian nationalists who want to scare their followers into thinking that, as Trump has suggested, Joe Biden is against God and the Bible.

It is important to keep in mind that the only reason we know about these Russian efforts is because some reporters put in the time to track down the story. Senator Richard Blumenthal, who has seen what our intelligence services know about Russian interference, said that the 2020 efforts “make Moscow’s past interference and nefarious actions look like child’s play.” But the Trump administration is keeping that information from the public, while the attorney general hypes the antifa story and puts all of his energy into accusing the Obama administration of “spying” into the Trump campaign. That strikes me as the definition of collusion.