BB2bak txt

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</div><div>breitbart2bak1121</div><div>
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</div><div>11/21 hard to save, req field missing</div><div>
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</div><div>Followers 8,606,181 Annual Revenue $3.69 million13</div><div>Facebook 5,267,281 Monthly Visits 49.9 million</div><div>Instagram 1,479,900 Google Ads Yes</div><div>Twitter 1,510,000 Others ads RevContent</div><div>YouTube 349,000 Facebook Ads No14</div><div>
</div><div>Breitbart News was once described as a “platform for the alt-right” by its former chairman, the ex-Trump adviser</div><div>Steve Bannon.”15</div><div>Launched in 2007, the site has long published false and misleading claims about women and minority groups as</div><div>well as conspiracy theories about Barack Obama’s status as a US citizen. Breitbart’s writers are, according to NBC:</div><div>“nationalistic, often linking immigrants and refugees with violence and the degradation of Western values.”16</div><div>The site regularly publishes climate change denial, with US contributor John Nolte and Breitbart London’s executive</div><div>editor James Delingpole both having repeatedly referred to climate change as a “hoax” pushed by so-called “climate</div><div>alarmists”.17</div><div>In 2011, the family of hedge fund billionaire and Republican donor Robert Mercer purchased nearly half of Breitbart</div><div>for $10 million.18 Mercer has a record of funding groups that challenge the scientific consensus on climate change,</div><div>such as the Heartland Institute, the Heritage Foundation and the Media Research Center, a member of the Toxic Ten.</div><div>In 2016 alone, Mercer is reported to have given nearly $4 million to such groups.19 He also co-founded and invested</div><div>in Cambridge Analytica, which came under fire for collecting the data of up to 87 million Facebook users.20</div><div>
</div><div>This Breitbart article in our sample stokes fears of pro-climate policies.</div><div>It promotes a conspiracy theory about “the leftist connections between</div><div>ostensibly public-health-related lockdown decrees, the Great Reset,</div><div>and ‘climate change’ advocacy”.21 Google ads for a conference on</div><div>“environmental, social and governance (ESG)” issues for energy</div><div>companies were being promoted next to the article.22</div><div>
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</div><div>6/16</div><div>see main and bannon</div><div>tag brbrt</div><div>andrew bak 619</div><div>
</div><div>perhaps neglected a bit // to fox jrnl fail b/c it's constant</div><div>
</div><div>this bak 1019</div><div>=</div><div>=</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/youre-not-supposed-to-understand-the-hunter-biden-smear-chaos-is-the-point</div><div>
</div><div>kos</div><div>Acclaimed journalist and historian Anne Applebaum understands the universe of propaganda as well as anyone alive today. Winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, she has devoted the past three decades to studying Russia and Eastern and Central Europe, with an emphasis on disinformation and propaganda so acute that she was herself targeted—by a Russian-originated smear campaign in retaliation for her writings about Vladimir Putin's annexation of Crimea. She now contributes her cache of knowledge to The Atlantic, among other publications.</div><div>
</div><div>For someone so well-versed, analyzing the blatant behavior of propagandist right-wing media outlets such as Fox News is something akin to a chess master analyzing the strategy of Tic-Tac-Toe—simple, and even relaxing. So after watching the antics of Donald Trump during his final debate with Joe Biden, she wrote a piece for The Atlantic on Friday that explains what millions of Americans are still shaking their heads in bewilderment about today: the source—and more importantly, the purpose—of Trump's bizarre accusations about Hunter Biden and his allegedly nefarious dealings with certain obscure individuals.</div><div>
</div><div>Of course the direct conduits of this nonsense are what we in the sane world regard as the fever swamps of paranoiac right-wing conspiracy thinking, most visibly manifested on the Fox News channel. As Applebaum notes, the actual storyline, spun out of whole cloth, is purposefully designed to be opaque, leading someone trying to divine the actual facts to become frustrated and give up trying to make sense of them. In fact, as her article's title suggests, "You're not supposed to understand the rumors about Biden."</div><div>
</div><div>Because the story is not intended to make sense, but to create a fog of doubt.</div><div>
</div><div>Just like the fictional legend these same people wove around "Hillary's emails," the Hunter Biden fiction also concerns emails—these ones allegedly kept by a former business partner of Hunter Biden, and miraculously disclosed to a peripheral former and supposed "investigative journalist" named Matthew Tyrmand. Tyrmand, notably, was formerly (and peripherally) associated with the right-wing fraudster and provocateur James O'Keefe.</div><div>
</div><div>That piece of critical information would lead most knowledgeable people to immediately shelve the unfounded Hunter Biden scheme in that mental compartment where bad ideas go to eventually die. But the Fox News audience is by definition anything but "knowledgeable people." On that network, the Hunter Biden nonsense is not something analogous to the disappointingly empty caverns of "Al Capone's vault," but rather an ever-opening flower, chock full of conspiracy-thinking goodness.</div><div>
</div><div>In releasing the 26,000 emails, Tyrmand and his collaborator, the Breitbart News contributor Peter Schweizer, are not bringing forth any evidence of actual lawbreaking, or an actual security threat, by either Hunter or Joe Biden. They are instead creating a miasma, an atmosphere, a foggy world in which misdeeds might have taken place, and in which corruption might have happened. They are also providing the raw material from which more elaborate stories can be constructed. The otherwise incomprehensible reference in last night's debate to "the mayor of Moscow's wife," from whom Joe Biden somehow got rich, was an excellent example of how this works. A name surfaces in a large collection of data; it is detached from its context; it is then used to make an insinuation or accusation that cannot be proved; it is then forgotten, unless it gains some traction, in which case it is repeated again.</div><div>Applebaum provides some basic background for the uninformed and uninitiated (i.e., normal Americans).</div><div>
</div><div>Those who live outside the Fox News bubble and intend to remain there do not, of course, need to learn any of this stuff. Judging by what has been published, the very worst thing that Tyrmand's email cache could reveal (if it is authentic) is that some unattractive people sought to use Hunter Biden's surname and connections to get business deals or score a visit to the White House for their clients. But we already know about Hunter Biden's involvement with unattractive people, and his struggles with addiction; we also know that, under normal circumstances, dozens of people visit the White House every day. On the grand scale of misdeeds committed by politicians and their relatives, this kind of thing barely registers.</div><div>Applebaum then helpfully includes a laundry list of Trump's corruption that puts to shame whatever the right hopes to spin out of this email concoction. As readers of Daily Kos, you're more than familiar with these.</div><div>
</div><div>But there is a purpose lurking here in the mind of Fox News mogul Rupert Murdoch. The first and most obvious? To assist Trump in deflecting attention—for these final 10 days—from his horrific malfeasance in the face of a pandemic whose vicious resurgence is soon likely to be the sole focus of the nightly newscasts. The second reason is to provide a ready well of sludge to draw upon in the seemingly likely event (as Murdoch himself has acknowledged) that the polls turn out to be correct, and Trump loses the election.</div><div>
</div><div>They will continue to serve a function after the election as well. If Biden wins, Foxworld will need some way to keep its audience focused on something other than the Cabinet he appoints, the new legislation he passes, and all the other events, decisions, and changes that used to constitute "news." Instead of all that real-life stuff—laws and regulations, statistics and investigations, debates about the economy and health care—the leading figures of the right-wing conspiracy bubble will, over the next months and years, dip into the email caches to keep their followers focused on an alternate reality in which Joe Biden is a secret oligarch, his son is an important figure in the Chinese mafia, and LOL nothing matters. Just as you need to know the backstories of the stars in the DC Comics universe in order to understand the nuances of a Batman movie, six months from now you might also need to know all about Cooney and Archer and the wife of the mayor of Moscow if you want to understand Ingraham's monologues.</div><div>Applebaum, a rapt student of propaganda, knows that outside of hosting the inevitable guest appearances (between court dates) that Donald Trump will insist on during the next four years—assuming he loses—the Fox News yappers need something to talk and talk about, and it certainly isn't going to be Republican policies. So this fictional narrative serves the interests both of Fox News—whose main concern is keeping its soon-to-be demoralized audience content and soporific—and also helps to deflect the inevitable horror stories that will be uncovered by a Democratic-controlled Congress investigating the Trump crime family's vast trail of detritus throughout our government.</div><div>
</div><div>By talking about Hunter Biden, the Trump family, especially the Trump children, also hopes to deflect attention from their own greatest weakness, namely the amoral, kleptocratic nepotism that they embody like no family ever before in American history...</div><div>[...]</div><div>None of them can win using ideas anymore, because they don't have any. All they can do is seek attention: gesticulate, wave their arms in the air, shout at the crowd, invent things, and try to attract the fame and attention they feel they deserve, even though they can no longer explain why they deserve it.</div><div>Put simply, assuming Joe Biden wins this election, we should all gear up for four long years of Fox News-inspired fantasy programming.</div><div>
</div><div>Of course, there's always the mute button.</div><div>
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</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/tucker-carlson-rages-after-social-media-platforms-finally-check-his-racist-conspiracies</div><div>
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</div><div>on&nbsp; Tuesday, Tucker Carlson broke away from his usual format of being racist against mostly Black people and Latino folks, to get racist against the country of China. In a segment that Fox News emblazoned with the chyron “Coronavirus Whistleblower talks to Tucker,” Tucker brought on Chinese virologist Dr. Li-Meng Yan to promote a debunked conspiracy theory that the Chinese government created the SARS-CoV-2 in a lab. Her theory is based on what she and three other colleagues say are telltale signs that the virus did not evolve naturally.</div><div>
</div><div>Yan’s theory and the report she was promoting on Carlson’s show have not been peer reviewed, and since it lacks any evidence to back it up, “evidence” she claimed during the interview but never seemed to get around to presenting, has been considered debunked for months by the overwhelming majority of the scientific community.Both Facebook and Instagram (owned by Facebook) flagged Tucker Carlson virus posts as “false information.” Twitter has followed suit, suspending Yan’s account. Tucker is freaking-out mad that the social media sites, usually complicit in the right wing’s spread of misinformation and lies, is cracking down even a little on the almost always egregious lies people like Carlson promotes.</div><div>
</div><div>One of the ways that Tucker attempted to sell Yan to the public was that because she is Chinese herself, she cannot be racist against Chinese people and therefore isn’t wrong about accusing the Chinese Communist Party and Chinese scientists of creating the virus because she is racist. You see how that tail gets eaten by itself? The idea that Yan and this research team found special evidence in the genome of SARS-CoV-2 is interesting since the genome has been publicly available to any scientist with access to a computer and the internet for months.</div><div>
</div><div>Carlson’s “interview,” forgot to mention that Dr. Yan’s not-peer-reviewed “report” was published “by two nonprofit organizations, the Rule of Law Society and the Rule of Law Foundation,” both connected to former Trump adviser and generally terrible person Steve Bannon. Forbes reports that “the four authors of the paper, Li-Meng Yan, Shu Kang, and Jie Guan, and Shanchang Hu, all have the Rule of Law Society and Rule of Law Foundation as their affiliation.” The University of Hong Kong has distanced themselves from Yan, and have contradicted her personal narrative, saying “Dr. Yan never conducted any research on human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus at HKU during December 2019 and January 2020, her central assertion of the said interview."</div><div>
</div><div>now, any good conspiracy theorist will tell you that you cannot trust China or the University of Hong Kong, and they would have the power and the motive to smear a scientist who was accusing them of unleashing a global pandemic. But strangely, for all of the purported “evidence,” the researchers forgot to submit their explosive findings to a legitimate scientific journal. I mean, if they had that evidence, they would win Nobels and Yan would be exonerated pretty quickly.</div><div>
</div><div>But this is a trumped-up conspiracy theory to distract the public from the Trump administration’s homicidal neglect of our country’s national and public health security. The hope is that in promoting China as the evil concoctors of this virus as some kind of biological weapon, Americans will make the leap to believe that there was little Trump could have done to be prepared for it. Don’t try to explain it to me.</div><div>
</div><div>Online, people chronicled how the Bannon right-wing machine promoted this calorie-free theory instantly, pushing it into the general consciousness, or more specifically, into the right wing’s general consciousness. Everything from the New York Post pushing the conspiracy theory based on the Carlson evidence-free interview, to Yan’s heavily edited Wikipedia page, reengineered to seem more serious and rigorous than it was previously.</div><div>
</div><div>Tucker has since decided to go full-on in on Wuhan-created virus conspiracy theory, adding a new low to the Tucker Carlson experience. Tucker is now promoting his show by saying that Facebook, and any and every scientist that disagrees with the conspiracy theory is a part of the conspiracy theory. So while he and his surrogates will not and cannot provide actual evidence for their many outrageous claims, if you point that out … you are a part of the conspiracy.</div><div>
</div><div>It’s not a new angle. In fact, this has been the right wing’s entire propaganda gimmick for the last four decades. Say you are strong on National Security and supportive of the troops, while cutting back on social services and military health services that directly impact them and us. Promote that conservatives are fiscally responsible, while blowing out the deficit every time they are in a position of power. It has been effective as the majority of Americans believe that social media companies are censoring people, and most of the people screaming about being censored are right-wing websites with enormous amounts of traffic, or conspiracy-theorist hucksters. Sadly, our country’s inability to think critically is an enormous problem.</div><div>
</div><div>The work that needs to be done is hard work. The answers are not implemented easily. You don’t get to just post blame on something and then fold your arms and say it shouldn’t be this way. It is this way and solving the issues take work.</div><div>
</div><div>If you want you can watch the fact-free interview with Yan below.</div><div>
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</div><div>=</div><div></div><div>https://www.mediamatters.org/facebook/report-facebook-employees-have-evidence-showing-pattern-preferential-treatment-right-wing</div><div>
</div><div>A new BuzzFeed report reveals that Facebook employees have evidence that shows the platform gives preferential treatment to right-wing Facebook pages, which is at stark odds with conservatives’ frequent and unsubstantiated claims that social media platforms are censoring right-wing accounts.</div><div>
</div><div>An August 6 article from Craig Silverman and Ryan Mac reports that there are growing internal concerns about how Facebook handles misinformation, particularly misinformation related to voting and the upcoming 2020 presidential election.&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>In internal message boards, employees questioned “the apparent special treatment of right-wing pages” including the far-right outlet Breitbart, which Facebook considers a “trusted new source.” Reportedly, employees have evidence that shows “a pattern of preferential treatment for right-wing publishers and pages,” including interference in Facebook’s fact-checking process from company leaders such as Facebook Vice President for Global Public Policy Joel Kaplan. Kaplan, a former deputy White House chief of staff for the George W. Bush administration, reportedly pushed for Facebook to partner with right-wing groups and was involved in nixing proposed solutions to stop political polarization on the platform.</div><div>
</div><div>This reporting comes as right-wing politicians and figures continue to baselessly accuse Facebook and other social media platforms of censorship and anti-conservative bias. During the House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee hearing last month, conservative lawmakers repeatedly alleged that Facebook is biased against right-leaning content. Additionally, Fox News attacked Facebook and accused the platform of censorship after Facebook enforced its policy against COVID-19 misinformation.</div><div>
</div><div>Media Matters has repeatedly found that claims of anti-conservative bias on social media platforms are false. In multiple studies over the course of several years, Media Matters has shown that right-leaning and left-leaning content thrives on Facebook, with right-leaning Facebook pages earning more interactions -- reactions, comments, shares -- on posts about voting and posts about protests against police brutality than do posts from left-leaning or ideologically nonaligned pages. In recent weeks, this trend has continued to hold.&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>BuzzFeed’s latest report about Facebook employees claiming there is a pattern of preferential treatment toward right-leaning Facebook pages and figures further underscores how Facebook has caved to pressure from conservatives, despite evidence repeatedly debunking conservatives’ baseless accusations. From BuzzFeed’s August 6 article:</div><div>
</div><div>With heightened internal tensions and morale at a low point, concerns about how the company handles fact-checked content have exploded in an internal Workplace group dedicated to misinformation policy.</div><div>
</div><div>Last Friday, at another all-hands meeting, employees asked Zuckerberg how right-wing publication Breitbart News could remain a Facebook News partner after sharing a video that promoted unproven treatments and said masks were unnecessary to combat the novel coronavirus. The video racked up 14 million views in six hours before it was removed from Breitbart’s page, though other accounts continued to share it.</div><div>
</div><div>Zuckerberg danced around the question, but did note that Breitbart could be removed from the company's news tab if it were to receive two strikes for publishing misinformation within 90 days of each other. (Facebook News partners, which include dozens of publications such as BuzzFeed News and the Washington Post, receive compensation and placement in a special news tab on the social network.)</div><div>
</div><div>“This was certainly one strike against them for misinformation, but they don't have others in the last 90 days,” Zuckerberg said. “So by the policies that we have, which by the way I think are generally pretty reasonable on this, it doesn't make sense to remove them.”</div><div>
</div><div>But some of Facebook’s own employees gathered evidence they say shows Breitbart — along with other right-wing outlets and figures including Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, Trump supporters Diamond and Silk, and conservative video production nonprofit Prager University — has received special treatment that helped it avoid running afoul of company policy. They see it as part of a pattern of preferential treatment for right-wing publishers and pages, many of which have alleged that the social network is biased against conservatives.</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>=</div><div>Social media platforms elevated a video featuring disinformation about COVID-19. Right-wing media figures embraced it.</div><div>On July 27, a video making false claims about COVID-19 began circulating on Facebook, and soon other social media platforms. Within a day, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter committed to taking it down, but copies are still spreading -- and even worse, mainstream right-wing media figures are embracing the video , even as we learn about the deranged figures behind it.</div><div>
</div><div>First promoted by the Tea Party Patriots and Breitbart, the video featured members of a group called “America’s Frontline Doctors” holding a press conference in front of the Supreme Court. One of the speakers, Dr. Stella Immanuel , falsely claimed that “you don't need masks” to prevent the spread of COVID-19; she also falsely claimed hydroxychloroquine was a cure for the disease. It's not, and the fact is that trusted studies have repeatedly shown no effect.</div><div>
</div><div>Within hours, Donald Trump had retweeted claims from the video.</div><div>
</div><div>The Daily Beast found that Immanuel has made some truly bizarre claims, including that alien DNA can be used in medical treatments, and that some medical problems are caused by sex with demons. Eric Hananoki found that Immanuel had a long track record of anti-LGBTQ remarks, including calling homosexuality "the agenda of the Devil." The rest of the "Frontline Doctors" are hardly any better.</div><div>
</div><div>Facebook and Twitter removed the original video, with a Facebook spokesperson saying the reason was it shared “false information about cures and treatments for COVID-19,” and a Twitter spokesperson saying, “We're taking action in line with our Covid misinfo policy.” However, Media Matters found multiple instances of the video being re-uploaded on Facebook and Twitter following the platform’s statements.</div><div>
</div><div>Fox News and right-wing media did a full-throated defense of the video and the doctors, despite the lies and the extremist personalities. Rush Limbaugh extensively defended Immanuel, claiming the Daily Beast ran a "hit piece" on her. Tucker Carlson complained about the video being removed while also attacked the Daily Beast's reporting. Immanuel herself said that the Daily Beast's reporting did "a great job summarizing our deliverance ministry and exposing incubus and succubus.”</div><div>
</div><div>Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham also complained about the video being removed. Ingraham hosted one of the "Frontline Doctors," who repeated the false claim that hydroxychloroquine was a "cure."</div><div>
</div><div>The entire right-wing ecosystem is built upon and thrives upon conspiracy theories. While conspiracy theories once took weeks or months to reach millions (for example, conspiracy theories about Barack Obama's birth certificate), the process now happens in a matter of minutes -- and this time, the misinformation puts public health on the line. Even worse, platforms like Facebook and Twitter are either unwilling or unable to stop it.</div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div></div><div>ref</div><div>
</div><div>https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/25/us/politics/trump-allies-news-media.html</div><div>
</div><div>no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>Trump Allies Target Journalists Over Coverage Deemed Hostile to White House</div><div>The operation has compiled dossiers of potentially embarrassing social media posts and other public statements by hundreds of people who work at prominent news organizations.</div><div>
</div><div>The operation has compiled dossiers of potentially embarrassing social media posts and other public statements by hundreds of people who work at prominent news organizations.</div><div>
</div><div>By Kenneth P. Vogel and Jeremy W. Peters</div><div>Published Aug. 25, 2019</div><div>Updated Aug. 26, 2019</div><div>
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</div><div>WASHINGTON — A loose network of conservative operatives allied with the White House is pursuing what they say will be an aggressive operation to discredit news organizations deemed hostile to President Trump by publicizing damaging information about journalists.</div><div>
</div><div>It is the latest step in a long-running effort by Mr. Trump and his allies to undercut the influence of legitimate news reporting. Four people familiar with the operation described how it works, asserting that it has compiled dossiers of potentially embarrassing social media posts and other public statements by hundreds of people who work at some of the country’s most prominent news organizations.</div><div>
</div><div>The group has already released information about journalists at CNN, The Washington Post and The New York Times — three outlets that have aggressively investigated Mr. Trump — in response to reporting or commentary that the White House’s allies consider unfair to Mr. Trump and his team or harmful to his re-election prospects.</div><div>
</div><div>Operatives have closely examined more than a decade’s worth of public posts and statements by journalists, the people familiar with the operation said. Only a fraction of what the network claims to have uncovered has been made public, the people said, with more to be disclosed as the 2020 election heats up. The research is said to extend to members of journalists’ families who are active in politics, as well as liberal activists and other political opponents of the president.</div><div>
</div><div>It is not possible to independently assess the claims about the quantity or potential significance of the material the pro-Trump network has assembled. Some involved in the operation have histories of bluster and exaggeration. And those willing to describe its techniques and goals may be trying to intimidate journalists or their employers.</div><div>
</div><div>But the material publicized so far, while in some cases stripped of context or presented in misleading ways, has proved authentic, and much of it has been professionally harmful to its targets.</div><div>
</div><div>It is clear from the cases to date that among the central players in the operation is Arthur Schwartz, a combative 47-year-old conservative consultant who is a friend and informal adviser to Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son. Mr. Schwartz has worked with some of the right’s most aggressive operatives, including the former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon.</div><div>
</div><div>“If the @nytimes thinks this settles the matter we can expose a few of their other bigots,” Mr. Schwartz tweeted on Thursday in response to an apologetic tweet from a Times journalist whose anti-Semitic social media posts had just been revealed by the operation. “Lots more where this came from.”</div><div>
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</div><div>The operation is the latest step in a long-running effort by President Trump and his allies to undercut the influence of legitimate news reporting.</div><div>
</div><div>The information unearthed by the operation has been commented on and spread by officials inside the Trump administration and re-election campaign, as well as conservative activists and right-wing news outlets such as Breitbart News. In the case of the Times editor, the news was first published by Breitbart, immediately amplified on Twitter by Donald Trump Jr. and, among others, Katrina Pierson, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign, and quickly became the subject of a Breitbart interview with Stephanie Grisham, the White House press secretary and communications director.</div><div>
</div><div>The White House press office said that neither the president nor anyone in the White House was involved in or aware of the operation, and that neither the White House nor the Republican National Committee was involved in funding it.</div><div>
</div><div>The Trump campaign said it was unaware of, and not involved in, the effort, but suggested that it served a worthy purpose. “We know nothing about this, but it’s clear that the media has a lot of work to do to clean up its own house,” said Tim Murtaugh, the campaign’s communications director.</div><div>
</div><div>The campaign is consistent with Mr. Trump’s long-running effort to delegitimize critical reporting and brand the news media as an “enemy of the people.” The president has relentlessly sought to diminish the credibility of news organizations and cast them as politically motivated opponents.</div><div>
</div><div>[Latest Updates: 2020 Election&nbsp;</div><div>Asked about Russian bounties, Trump says his phone call with Putin focused on ‘other things.’</div><div>A new poll shows Biden tied with Trump in Georgia.</div><div>The president floats the idea of giving his renomination speech in Washington, a likely Hatch Act violation.</div><div>See more updates]</div><div>
</div><div>Journalism, he said in a tweet last week, is “nothing more than an evil propaganda machine for the Democrat Party.”</div><div>
</div><div>The operation has compiled social media posts from Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, and stored images of the posts that can be publicized even if the user deletes them, said the people familiar with the effort. One claimed that the operation had unearthed potentially “fireable” information on “several hundred” people.</div><div>
</div><div>“I am sure there will be more scalps,” said Sam Nunberg, a former aide to Mr. Trump who is a friend of Mr. Schwartz.</div><div>
</div><div>Mr. Nunberg and others who are familiar with the campaign described it as meant to expose what they see as the hypocrisy of mainstream news outlets that have reported on the president’s inflammatory language regarding race.</div><div>
</div><div>Image</div><div>Arthur Schwartz, a conservative consultant who is a friend and informal adviser to the president’s eldest son.]</div><div>
</div><div>“Two can play at this game,” he said. “The media has long targeted Republicans with deep dives into their social media, looking to caricature all conservatives and Trump voters as racists.”</div><div>
</div><div>But using journalistic techniques to target journalists and news organizations as retribution for — or as a warning not to pursue — coverage critical of the president is fundamentally different from the well-established role of the news media in scrutinizing people in positions of power.</div><div>
</div><div>“If it’s clearly retaliatory, it’s clearly an attack, it’s clearly not journalism,” said Leonard Downie Jr., who was the executive editor of The Post from 1991 to 2008. Tension between a president and the news media that covers him is nothing new, Mr. Downie added. But an organized, wide-scale political effort to intentionally humiliate journalists and others who work for media outlets is.</div><div>
</div><div>“It’s one thing for Spiro Agnew to call everyone in the press ‘nattering nabobs of negativism,’” he said, referring to the former vice president’s famous critique of how journalists covered President Richard M. Nixon. “And another thing to investigate individuals in order to embarrass them publicly and jeopardize their employment.”</div><div>
</div><div>A. G. Sulzberger, the publisher of The Times, said in a statement that such tactics were taking the president’s campaign against a free press to a new level.</div><div>
</div><div>“They are seeking to harass and embarrass anyone affiliated with the leading news organizations that are asking tough questions and bringing uncomfortable truths to light,” Mr. Sulzberger said. “The goal of this campaign is clearly to intimidate journalists from doing their job, which includes serving as a check on power and exposing wrongdoing when it occurs. The Times will not be intimidated or silenced.”</div><div>
</div><div>In a statement, a CNN spokesman said that when government officials, “and those working on their behalf, threaten and retaliate against reporters as a means of suppression, it’s a clear abandonment of democracy for something very dangerous.”</div><div>
</div><div>The operation is targeting the news media by using one of the most effective weapons of political combat — deep and laborious research into the public records of opponents to find contradictions, controversial opinions or toxic affiliations. The liberal group Media Matters for America helped pioneer close scrutiny of public statements by conservative media personalities.</div><div>
</div><div>Those familiar with the campaign described it as meant to expose what they see as the hypocrisy of mainstream news outlets that have covered the president’s inflammatory language regarding race.Credit...George Etheredge/The New York Times]</div><div>
</div><div>The conservative operative James O’Keefe has twisted that concept in ways inconsistent with traditional journalistic ethics, using false identities, elaborate cover stories and undercover videos to entrap journalists and publicize embarrassing statements, often in misleading ways, to undercut the credibility of what he considers news media biased in favor of liberals.</div><div>
</div><div>In the case of the pro-Trump network, research into journalists is being deployed for the political benefit of the White House. It is targeting not only high-profile journalists who challenge the administration, but also anyone who works for any news organization that members of the network see as hostile to Mr. Trump, no matter how tangential that job may be to the coverage of his presidency. And it is being used explicitly as retribution for coverage.</div><div>
</div><div>Some reporters have been warned that they or their news organizations could be targets, creating the impression that the campaign is intended in part to deter them from aggressive coverage as well as to inflict punishment after an article has been published.</div><div>
</div><div>Trained as a lawyer, Mr. Schwartz has endeared himself to members of the president’s family by becoming one of their most aggressive defenders, known for badgering and threatening reporters and others he believes have wronged the Trumps.</div><div>
</div><div>He has publicly gone after Republicans he views as disloyal, including the former White House chief of staff Reince Priebus, about whom he admitted spreading an unsubstantiated rumor. He has called himself a “troll on Twitter,” which is where he has boasted of being aware of, or having access to, damaging information on dozens of journalists at CNN and The Times that could be deployed if those outlets ran afoul of Mr. Trump or his allies.</div><div>
</div><div>The operation’s tactics were on display last week, seemingly in response to two pieces in The Times that angered Mr. Trump’s allies. The paper’s editorial board published an editorial on Wednesday accusing Mr. Trump of fomenting anti-Semitism, and the newsroom published a profile on Thursday morning of Ms. Grisham, the new White House press secretary, which included unflattering details about her employment history.</div><div>
</div><div>One person involved in the effort said the pro-Trump forces, aware ahead of time about the coverage of Ms. Grisham, were prepared to respond. Early Thursday morning, soon after the profile appeared online, Breitbart News published an article that documented anti-Semitic and racist tweets written a decade ago by Tom Wright-Piersanti, who was in college at the time and has since become an editor on the Times’ politics desk. The Times said it was reviewing the matter and considered the posts “a clear violation of our standards.”</div><div>
</div><div>Mr. Schwartz tweeted a link to the Breitbart piece before 7 a.m., which Donald Trump Jr. retweeted to his 3.8 million followers — the first of about two dozen times that the president’s son shared the article or its contents. Other prominent Republicans, including Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, joined in highlighting the report.</div><div>
</div><div>Image</div><div>
</div><div>Mr. Schwartz is a friend and informal adviser to Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times]</div><div>
</div><div>Breitbart’s article quoted several people or groups with close ties to Mr. Schwartz, including Richard Grenell, Mr. Trump’s ambassador to Germany, and the Zionist Organization of America. It was written by the site’s Washington political editor, Matthew Boyle, whose relationship with Mr. Schwartz started when Mr. Bannon ran the website.</div><div>
</div><div>Mr. Boyle’s article included a reference to the Times profile of Ms. Grisham, which it characterized as “attacking White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham.” Mr. Wright-Piersanti was uninvolved in the editing of the article about Ms. Grisham.</div><div>
</div><div>The tweets revealed in the Breitbart article quickly spread to other conservative outlets favored by the president and his allies, including the radio shows of Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin.</div><div>
</div><div>Mr. Wright-Piersanti apologized on Twitter on Thursday morning and deleted offensive tweets. Mr. Schwartz then issued his warning that he had further damaging information about Times employees.</div><div>
</div><div>Mr. Wright-Piersanti, 32, said the tweets, posted when he was a college student with a Twitter following consisting mostly of personal acquaintances, were “my lame attempts at edgy humor to try to get a rise out of my friends.”</div><div>
</div><div>But he said “they’re not funny, they’re clearly offensive,” adding, “I feel deep shame for them, and I am truly, honestly sorry that I wrote these.”</div><div>
</div><div>He said he had forgotten about the tweets as he started a career in journalism.</div><div>
</div><div>“For my generation, the generation that came of age in the internet, all the youthful mistakes that you made get preserved in digital amber, and no matter how much you change and mature and grow up, it’s always out there, waiting to be discovered,” Mr. Wright-Piersanti said.</div><div>
</div><div>Like Mr. Wright-Piersanti, other targets of the pro-Trump network have been young people who grew up with social media and wrote the posts in question when they were in their teens or early 20s, in most cases before they became professional journalists.</div><div>
</div><div>Image</div><div>The photojournalist Mohammed Elshamy in 2014 in South Sudan. Tweets he wrote in his teens became the basis for articles in conservative news outlets.Credit...Andrei Pungovschi]</div><div>
</div><div>A week after a White House reporter for CNN sparred with Mr. Trump during a news conference, Mr. Schwartz highlighted a tweet by the reporter from 2011, when the reporter was in college, that used an anti-gay slur. Other similar tweets quickly surfaced, and the reporter apologized, though Mr. Schwartz has continued to antagonize the reporter on Twitter.</div><div>
</div><div>In recent months, Mr. Schwartz highlighted a nearly decade-old tweet in which a reporter for The Post had repeated in an ambiguous manner a slur used by a politician.</div><div>
</div><div>In March, Mr. Schwartz tweeted a link to an article from Breitbart, written by Mr. Boyle, about a reporter from Business Insider whose Instagram account included anti-Trump references and a photograph of the reporter demonstrating against the president.</div><div>
</div><div>In July, around the time CNN published an article exposing old posts by a Trump appointee spreading suggestions that Barack Obama was a Muslim whose loyalty to the United States was in question, Mr. Schwartz resurfaced anti-Semitic tweets from 2011 by a CNN photo editor. Mr. Schwartz suggested that a CNN reporter who specializes in unearthing problematic archival content should “look into the social media activities of your employees.”</div><div>
</div><div>The tweets became the basis for several articles in conservative news outlets and hundreds of tweets from conservatives targeting the photo editor, Mohammed Elshamy, which did not stop even after he resigned under pressure from CNN and apologized.</div><div>
</div><div>“It felt like a coordinated attack,” said Mr. Elshamy, who said he had received death threats. “It was overwhelming.”</div><div>
</div><div>Mr. Elshamy, who is now 25, said he posted the tweets when he was 15 and 16 years old, growing up in Egypt, when he was still learning English and did not fully grasp the meaning of the words.</div><div>
</div><div>“I was repeating slogans heard on the streets during a highly emotional time in my nation’s history,” he said. “I believe that my subsequent work and views over the years redeems for the mistakes I made as a kid.”</div><div>
</div><div>While he said he understands “the severity and harm of my comments,” he questioned the motivation of the campaign that cost him his job. “It is a very dirty tactic that they are using to cause as much harm as they can to anyone who is affiliated with these media outlets,” he said. “It actually feels like a competition and every termination or vilification is a point for them.”</div><div>
</div><div>Mr. Bannon, at the time the head of Breitbart, oversaw the site’s efforts in 2015 to attack Megyn Kelly, then of Fox News, after she called out Mr. Trump for tweets disparaging women as “fat pigs,” “dogs” and “slobs.” In an interview, he said the work that Mr. Schwartz was undertaking should be seen as a sign that Mr. Trump’s supporters were committed to executing a frontal assault on news media they considered adversarial.</div><div>
</div><div>“A culture war is a war,” he said. “There are casualties in war. And that’s what you’re seeing.”</div><div></div><div></div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>trump finally shows signs of shame as he flees a press briefing without answering questions after disinfectant fiasco</div><div>
</div><div>maN bites dog 420 an:</div><div>
</div><div>Breitbart News issues humiliating correction on a bogus ‘fact-check’ that denied Trump proposed injecting disinfectants</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div></div><div></div><div>aha: "freestyling" at "press conf" but clearly spinning out simple metaphors</div><div>
</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/here-are-the-desperate-ways-trump-and-his-allies-are-trying-to-defend-his-dangerous-claim-about-injecting-disinfectants/</div><div>
</div><div>no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>Here are the desperate ways Trump and his allies are trying to defend his dangerous claim about injecting disinfectants</div><div>
</div><div>Written by Cody Fenwick April 24, 2020</div><div>
</div><div>Facing a barrage of fact-checks, criticism, and mockery, President Donald Trump and his defenders are trying to make excuses for his absurd and dangerous suggestion on Thursday that injecting people with disinfectants might help fight COVID-19.</div><div>
</div><div>To be 100 percent clear: There’s no reason to think this would work, and it is an even potentially fatal idea. Experts across the board insist that household cleaners should not be used internally on humans.</div><div>
</div><div>Because this is an obvious fact, Trump and his supporters are desperate to find an excuse for his dangerous suggestion. And unfortunately for them, two of the excuses they’ve already offered are contradictory. To review, here’s what Trump actually said:</div><div>
</div><div>And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out, in a minute. One minute. Is there a way we can do something like that? By injection, inside, or almost a cleaning, ’cause you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it would be interesting to check that. You’re going to have to use medical doctors, right? But it sounds interesting to me.</div><div>
</div><div>These remarks came after a discussion of a recent study on sunlight and disinfectants’ abilities to kill the virus on surfaces, outside of the body. Before discussing disinfectants, Trump also preposterously speculated that light could somehow be used externally or internally on the human body to treat COVID-19, which Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, dismissed. Watch the remarks below:</div><div>
</div><div>After hearing presentation President Trump suggests irradiating people’s bodies with UV light or injecting them with bleach or alcohol to deal with COVID19. pic.twitter.com/cohkLyyl9G</div><div>
</div><div>— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) April 23, 2020</div><div>
</div><div>If you watch the remarks, there’s really no ambiguity about what Trump is saying. He’s trying to extrapolate from studies about effective methods of cleaning the virus in the environment to treating humans who are infected. It’s a frankly childish understanding of medicine, but he presented it as a fascinating possibility — and on national TV, no less, where some vulnerable and susceptible viewers may actually take his claims seriously.</div><div>
</div><div>So how could one possibly defend these remarks? Breitbart, a far-right website that closely aligns itself with the president, took a widely mocked stab at offering an excuse in the form of “fact check”:</div><div>
</div><div>CLAIM: President Donald Trump suggested injecting people with disinfectant to cure coronavirus.</div><div>
</div><div>VERDICT: False. Trump was speaking generally about new information about sunlight, heat, and disinfectant killing the virus.</div><div>
</div><div>This is not so. As the clip shows, Trump was talking about using this information as a possible basis for testing potential treatments of COVID-19.</div><div>
</div><div>In the most desperate section of this “fact check,” writer Joel Pollak claimed that when Trump said the word “inject” he didn’t really mean “inject,” and it was unfair of critics to think he did:</div><div>
</div><div>Trump used the word “inject,” but what he meant was using a process — which he left “medical doctors” to define — in which patients’ lungs might be cleared of the virus, given new knowledge about its response to light and other factors.</div><div>
</div><div>The use of the word “other factors” here is particularly rich, because Trump talked about “injecting” directly after he brought up disinfectants specifically. That’s what was so egregious and concerning.</div><div>
</div><div>In a slightly more plausible defense of Trump, Breitbart pointed out that the president appeared to walk his comments back later in the briefing:</div><div>
</div><div>When ABC News’ Jonathan Karl asked Dr. Bryant about whether the president had proposed injecting a person with “bleach and isopropyl alcohol” later, Trump clarified that “It wouldn’t be through injection,” and that he was talking about “cleaning, sterilization of an area,” and about applying the disinfectant to “a stationary object.”</div><div>
</div><div>But he’s the actual exchange this refers to, per the White House transcript:</div><div>
</div><div>[KARL]&nbsp; &nbsp; But I — just, can I ask about — the President mentioned the idea of cleaners, like bleach and isopropyl alcohol you mentioned.&nbsp; There’s no scenario that that could be injected into a person, is there?&nbsp; I mean —</div><div>
</div><div>ACTING UNDER SECRETARY [BILL] BRYAN:&nbsp; No, I’m here to talk about the findings that we had in the study.&nbsp; We won’t do that within that lab and our lab.&nbsp; So —</div><div>
</div><div>THE PRESIDENT:&nbsp; It wouldn’t be through injection.&nbsp; We’re talking about through almost a cleaning, sterilization of an area.&nbsp; Maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t work.&nbsp; But it certainly has a big effect if it’s on a stationary object.</div><div>
</div><div>So here’s what actually seems to have happened. Trump floated the idea of injecting people with disinfectants. Then, incredulous, a reporter asked Bryan, who actually knows what he’s talking about, whether this could even be a possibility. Bryan knocks down the possibility that Trump floated directly, saying directly “no” and “We won’t do that within that lab and our lab.”</div><div>
</div><div>Then Trump, apparently realizing that others think this is an absurd idea, tries to backpedal the outrageously dangerous and simplistic idea that he had floated.</div><div>
</div><div>Now that Trump clearly knows that everyone is mocking and deriding him for this error, he’s trying to make his own excuse. But instead of sticking with Breitbart’s twisted interpretation that “inject” doesn’t really mean “inject,” Trump inow wants us to believe he was being sarcastic.</div><div>
</div><div>Asked about the injection remarks on Friday in the Oval Office, Trump said: “I was asking a question sarcastically to reporters like you just to see what would happen.”</div><div>
</div><div>Again, if you watch the remarks above, it’s clear they weren’t sarcastic. Later in Thursday’s briefing, when a reporter criticized Trump for floating baseless rumors, the president defended himself by saying he was just sharing ideas. And even if he had been sarcastic, it’s would still be dangerous to float such an idea during a briefing where people are trying to get information about the nation’s crisis.</div><div>
</div><div></div><div></div><div>Nunes: Whistleblower Complaint Is Another Steele Dossier</div><div>Search domain www.breitbart.com/2020-election/2019/09/26/devin-nunes-on-whistleblower-complaint-what-we-have-is-another-steele-dossier/https://www.breitbart.com/2020-election/2019/09/26/devin-nunes-on-whistleblower-complaint-what-we-have-is-another-steele-dossier/</div><div>Sep 26, 2019</div><div>
</div><div>House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Devin Nunes (R-CA) called the whistleblower complaint involving President Trump and Ukraine "another Steele dossier" and accused House Democrats of running an information warfare operation against the president.</div><div></div><div>180 on va gov after loss&nbsp; bgr</div><div></div><div>has neg trump stories but always labelled by dem thus not to be belieived/ to make ppl mad?</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>=</div><div>facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg gave a false answer during a congressional hearing before the House Financial Services Committee when asked about a division of right-wing website The Daily Caller being involved in Facebook’s fact-checking efforts.</div><div>
</div><div>Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) asked Zuckerberg why a division of The Daily Caller is included in the Facebook fact-checking project given the publication has many ties to white supremacists. Zuckerberg demurred on the question of Facebook’s role, and instead claimed that a third party was responsible for appointing the fact-checkers.</div><div>
</div><div>That claim is false. Facebook requires its partners to be accredited by the organization, but it is Facebook who decides which organizations they use in the fact-checking project. And yet, Zuckerberg repeated this falsehood during a follow-up question.</div><div>
</div><div>Breitbart in the Facebook News tab: As if that wasn't bad enough, Facebook announced its new "news tab" this week. While the company refused to release a full list of news organizations who are participating, it did announce that Breitbart was part of it.</div><div>
</div><div>Breitbart is certainly a disreputable website known for spreading misinformation. For example, in 2017, Breitbart’s editor-in-chief admitted that the website’s all-in defense of Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore was not a product of any news judgment about whether Moore had been accurately accused of child molestation, but instead was a political calculation meant to protect President Donald Trump against reports of his own sexual misconduct. When Breitbart petitioned for a permanent Senate press credential, it could not prove that it was editorially independent.</div><div>What stands out most in Breitbart’s inclusion in Facebook News is the supposed prohibition on hate speech. Breitbart has a long history with hate speech, including letting neo-Nazis ghostwrite articles. That is not an exaggeration, and it's only the tip of the iceberg.</div><div>
</div><div>When pressed about Breitbart's inclusion, Zuckerberg claimed that the news tab needs a "diversity" of views. It's just another standard BS answer that panders to the right - something that all of Facebook's executives are extremely well-practiced at by now.</div><div>
</div><div>Also: It turns out that Breitbart is also in Apple News.</div><div>
</div><div></div><div></div><div>
</div><div>manafort ukraine hit on Julia PM</div><div>
</div><div>https://yyy.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/apr/05/ex-trump-aide-paul-manafort-approved-black-ops-to-help-ukraine-president</div><div>
</div><div>no lnx docs</div><div>The Guardian -&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Former Trump aide approved 'black ops' to help Ukraine president</div><div>
</div><div>Exclusive: Paul Manafort authorised secret media operation that sought to discredit key opponent of then Ukrainian president</div><div>
</div><div>by Luke Harding</div><div>
</div><div>Thu 5 Apr 2018 11.00 EDTLast modified on Thu 5 Apr 2018 20.00 EDT</div><div>
</div><div>Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort authorised a secret media operation on behalf of Ukraine’s former president featuring “black ops”, “placed” articles in the Wall Street Journal and US websites and anonymous briefings against Hillary Clinton.</div><div>
</div><div>The project was designed to boost the reputation of Ukraine’s then leader, Viktor Yanukovych. It was part of a multimillion-dollar lobbying effort carried out by Manafort on behalf of Yanukovych’s embattled government, emails and documents reveal.</div><div>
</div><div>The strategies included:</div><div>
</div><div>• Proposing to rewrite Wikipedia entries to smear a key opponent of the then Ukrainian president.</div><div>
</div><div>• Setting up a fake thinktank in Vienna to disseminate viewpoints supporting Yanukovych.</div><div>
</div><div>• A social media blitz “aimed at targeted audiences in Europe and the US”.</div><div>
</div><div>• Briefing journalists from the rightwing website Breitbart to attack Clinton when she was US secretary of state.</div><div>
</div><div>Manafort’s Ukraine strategy anticipated later efforts by the Kremlin and its troll factory to use Twitter and Facebook to discredit Clinton and to help Trump win the 2016 US election. The material seen by the Guardian dates from 2011 to 2013.</div><div>
</div><div>Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating claims of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, has indicted Manafort on multiple counts. Manafort is accused of “laundering profits” from his lobbying work in Ukraine, carried out over a period of a decade for Yanukovych and his political party.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Mueller also accuses Manafort of hiring retired European politicians to lobby on behalf of Yanukovych, and paying them more than €2m (£1.74m, $2.45m) via offshore accounts.</div><div>
</div><div>The documents reveal another surreptitious operation to influence international opinion. In 2010 Yanukovych defeated his rival Yulia Tymoshenko in presidential elections. The following summer Ukrainian prosecutors arrested Tymoshenko and put her on trial. This provoked severe criticism from the Obama administration and the EU, which accused Yanukovych of locking up Tymoshenko for political reasons.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>In 2011 Manafort approved a clandestine strategy to discredit Tymoshenko abroad. Alan Friedman, a former Wall Street Journal and Financial Times reporter, based in Italy, masterminded this project. Friedman has previously been accused of concealing his work as a paid lobbyist.</div><div>
</div><div>Also involved were Rick Gates, Manafort’s then deputy, and Konstantin Kilimnik, another senior Manafort associate who the FBI believes has links to Russian military intelligence.</div><div>
</div><div>In July 2011 Friedman sent Manafort a confidential six-page document titled Ukraine - A Digital Roadmap. It laid out a plan to “deconstruct” Tymoshenko via videos, articles and social media. Yanukovych deferred to Manafort, who gave the project the go-ahead, sources in Ukraine’s former government say.</div><div>
</div><div>Friedman’s proposed operation was ambitious. It included producing anonymous videos attacking Tymoshenko and comparing the opposition leader to a drunk Boris Yeltsin. “The social media space offers great opportunities for guilt by association,” Friedman wrote in the document.</div><div>
</div><div>He continued: “We know that video exists of Tymoshenko uttering some of her outrageous claims in court … The video can be floated into the social space to reinforce the impression that she is at best reckless and unstatesmanlike and at worst malicious, defamatory and antisemitic.”</div><div>
</div><div>[An anonymous video attacking Yulia Tymoshenko.</div><div>
</div><div>Twitters users, including “those ‘known’ to us”, could retweet hostile content. The “roadmap” included a website, blogposts and “blast emails”, sent out to a “targeted audience in Europe and the US”. One section was called “Black Ops”. It said: “This could include Wikipedia page modification to highlight [Tymoshenko] corruption and trial and modify the tone of the language being used.”</div><div>
</div><div>Friedman worked with Eckart Sager, a one-time CNN producer. Emails show they liaised closely with “Paul”, who in turn briefed Yanukovych’s chief of staff, Serhiy Lyovochkin. Lyovochkin declined to comment. He appears in correspondence as “SL”.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>“He was under the radar,” one source said of Friedman. “Alan kept a low profile. Without Paul’s authorisation Alan would never have got a contract with the [Yanukovych] government.”</div><div>
</div><div>Friedman’s company FBC Media was retained on a “rolling contract”. It was paid around €150,000 every three months, sources in Kiev suggest. The money was deposited in an offshore account in Seychelles, they allege. Often the payments were late, prompting Friedman to complain, they add.</div><div>
</div><div>Quick guide</div><div>Paul Manafort Ukraine connections: who's who?</div><div>Show</div><div>
</div><div>Contacted by the Guardian, Friedman said these earnings were “declared”. He confirmed his company worked for Ukraine from late summer 2011 on what he called “a public relations and country profiling project”. He said: “It was not a secret or covert plan. We had PR people proposing interviews and features to newspapers very openly.”</div><div>
</div><div>He said its goal was to promote the Ukraine government’s then policy of moving closer to a partnership agreement with the EU. “Our aim was to keep a steady communication going in favour of dialogue between Brussels and Kiev. That was our message.</div><div>
</div><div>“We never supported a pro-Moscow stance and had already ended our relationship when the Ukrainian president abandoned closer ties with Europe.”</div><div>
</div><div>Asked whether he had registered with the US Department of Justice, Friedman said he had never worked as a lobbyist for Ukraine. He added: “I never registered as a foreign agent because I never was one.</div><div>
</div><div>“I was a communications guy, doing PR media strategy work in Europe for a client, like dozens of London PR companies that work for a variety of governments.”</div><div>
</div><div>The documents show Friedman reported directly to Kiev. In spring 2012 he told the foreign minister, Kostyantyn Gryshchenko, he had “generated dozens of positive op-eds/interviews/articles for print and TV” and “disseminated positive news stories” to nearly 2,000 publications.</div><div>
</div><div>Key to this strategy was a fake thinktank, the Center for the Study of Former Soviet Socialist Republics (CXSSR), set up with Manafort’s backing. Friedman used it to publish dozens of positive stories about Yanukovych, many of them authored by a “Matthew Lina”.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Lina’s comment pieces criticising Tymoshenko and Obama’s state department ran on the conservative US website RedState. Friedman told Manafort his editorial team ghostwrote an article by Yanukovych published by the Wall Street Journal.</div><div>
</div><div>He claimed credit for a Tymoshenko profile written by the Journal’s Matthew Kaminski. Kaminski said Friedman was never a source, “or even someone that as far as I can remember I had any contact whatsoever with”.</div><div>
</div><div>In April 2012 Friedman sent another “highly confidential” two-page document to Manafort. It set out plans to launch a “special website” entitled The Tymoshenko Files. The site would purport to belong to Inna Bohoslovska, a Ukrainian deputy and Tymoshenko critic.</div><div>
</div><div>In fact, Friedman would “discreetly prepare, implement and maintain” the site, the document said. It would include “ghost-penned” blogs and “a quasi-novella serialisation”. Asked about the website, Friedman said he had never written “any content”.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Emails seen by the Guardian show a regular pattern of interaction between Manafort, Friedman, Gates, Kilimnik and Ukrainian officials. Gates, who went on to work with Manafort on the 2016 Trump campaign, wrote several messages. In February Gates , and agreed to cooperate with Mueller.</div><div>
</div><div>At the time Kilimnik was the Russian manager of Manafort’s Kiev office. Kilminik is understood to be “Person A” in Mueller’s latest indictment, filed last week. It says the FBI believes Kilimnik has ties to Moscow’s GRU spy agency, and adds that Gates was aware of this. Kilimnik denies a connection. Friedman confirmed he had met Manafort and Gates but said he had done so “because the client asked me to”.</div><div>
</div><div>Manafort’s media operation included attacks on Clinton. In October 2012 Gates emailed Manafort and Friedman, flagging a piece written by the journalist Ben Shapiro. The Breitbart article criticised Clinton for her public support of Tymoshenko, who had recently made an electoral pact with the far-right Svoboda party.</div><div>
</div><div>The article cited a Jewish “leader” who accused Clinton anonymously of creating a “neo-Nazi Frankenstein”. Gates wrote: “Gentlemen – Here is the first part of a series of articles that will be coming as we continue to build this effort. Alan, you get full credit for the Frankenstein comment.”</div><div>
</div><div>The alleged use of offshore accounts is likely to interest the FBI. Manafort is accused of concealing more than $75m earned from his work in Ukraine.</div><div>
</div><div>Yanukovych’s attempts to woo western leaders ended in October 2013 when he accepted a bailout from Moscow. He fled to Russia after anti-government protests. In 2015 Friedman wrote an authorised biography of Silvio Berlusconi. Manafort continued to work for Yanukovych’s party up until he joined Trump’s campaign. Manafort denies wrongdoing and has said he will fight Mueller’s charges.</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/ben-shapiro-trump-used-irregular-channels-because-he-was-rightfully-paranoid/</div><div>
</div><div>ben Shapiro, a right-wing political commentator and the editor-in-chief of The Daily Wire, attempted to defend President Donald Trump in light of testimony from Bill Taylor, the United States’ top diplomat in Ukraine. Taylor testified that the Trump administration had circumvented normal diplomatic channels and that Trump ordered that foreign aid to the country be dependent on Ukraine’s president launching an investigation into one of Trump’s political enemies.</div><div>During Wednesday’s episode of his podcast, Shapiro defended Trump’s behavior surrounding Ukraine. In part of that defense, Shapiro argued that government is a “self-fulfilling prophecy” in which leaders rule according to their perception of what the government is like. Because Trump had good reason to believe the government was corrupt since he was being targeted by Democrats, Shapiro argued, he chose to use “improper channels” to do his political bidding.</div><div>
</div><div>“He also feels as if he has been targeted, and correctly so. He feels that he is being targeted by people inside his own administration, to the cheers of the media. And that’s true, he is being targeted by people in his own administration to the cheers of the media,” Shapiro said.</div><div>
</div><div>To back up his claims that Trump was right to feel targeted, Shapiro cited recent news reports that the author of an anonymous New York Times op-ed last year, identified only as a senior official in the Trump administration, will be publishing a book called “A Warning.” He argued that the book was the type of thing that would rightly motivate Trump to set up improper communications channels.</div><div>
</div><div>“That’s not good for the presidency. It’s not good for the country. And of course, it’s going to underscore how suspicious Trump is of people inside his administration, and it’s going to encourage Trump to set up exactly the sort of irregular channels that Bill Taylor was talking about,” Shapiro said. “Why would you set up an irregular channel? The only reason to set up an irregular channel is because you don’t trust the regular channel. One of the reasons you might not trust the regular channel is it feels like the regular channel is being used as a method of hurting you.”</div><div>
</div><div>Shapiro added, “It’s hard to argue with Trump about why Trump should feel differently.”</div><div>
</div><div>The anonymously authored book set to come out later this year is, according to Shapiro, “underscoring the president’s distrust in government, which leads him to set up irregular channels, which leads them to make mistakes, which leads him into traps, which leads the Democrats to seem to believe that they have material to impeach.”</div><div>
</div><div>Later in the same episode of his podcast, Shapiro argued that Trump’s comparison of the impeachment process to “lynching” was not actually problematic.</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>=</div><div>i have not been able to figure her TG out; many ads on AN</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>no lnx</div><div>Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton suggested that she thinks Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, is being “groomed” by Russia to run as a third-party candidate in 2020.</div><div>
</div><div>Clinton made the allegations during an interview with David Plouffe, Barack Obama’s former campaign manager. During the interview, Clinton alleged that Russia used 2016 Green Party nominee Jill Stein as an “asset” and suggested that Gabbard would play a similar role in the upcoming election without mentioning her name.</div><div>
</div><div>“They’re also going to do third-party again,” Clinton said. “I’m not making any predictions, but I think they’ve got their eye on someone who’s currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate. She’s the favorite of the Russians. They have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her so far.”</div><div>
</div><div>Clinton went on to label Stein a “Russian asset.”</div><div>
</div><div>“And that’s assuming Jill Stein will give it up, which she might not because she’s also a Russian asset,” Clinton said. “Yeah, she’s a Russian asset — I mean, totally. They know they can’t win without a third-party candidate. So I don’t know who it’s going to be, but I will guarantee you they will have a vigorous third-party challenge in the key states that they most needed.”...</div><div></div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/how-duplicitous-trolls-are-using-tulsi-gabbards-candidacy-to-foment-disruption-and-chaos/</div><div>
</div><div>nolnx</div><div>
</div><div>ous trolls are using Tulsi Gabbard’s candidacy to foment disruption and chaos</div><div>
</div><div>Written by Nancy LeTourneau / Washington Monthly August 23, 2019</div><div>
</div><div>Tulsi Gabbard is not going to be the Democratic nominee for president in 2020. At this point, her polling average at Real Clear Politics is 1.4%. Nevertheless, conservative media celebrated the fact that Gabbard won the online poll sponsored by Drudge Report after the first round of debates. Similarly, Gabbard won polls from both Breitbart and Drudge after her performance in the second debate. Those results were not replicated by any reputable polling firm.</div><div>
</div><div>Not long after the first debate, we learned what had prompted Gabbard’s success in those online polls.</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>Users from pro-Trump communities on 4chan and Reddit implored fellow members to vote for lower-polling candidates in online polls, specifically Tulsi Gabbard and Bill de Blasio, in the hours after Wednesday’s Democratic debate — a sign that digital manipulation efforts related to U.S. politics and elections remain very much alive....</div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div>
</div><div>raw story</div><div>
</div><div>ref 4 digby</div><div>
</div><div>https://www.rawstory.com/2019/09/new-york-times-battered-on-msnbc-for-pushing-smear-of-hunter-biden-in-order-to-maintain-access-to-trump/</div><div>
</div><div>An “AM Joy” panel jumped all over the New York Times for pushing a widely debunked smear of Hunter Biden promoted by Donald Trump, saying the newspaper is more interested in maintaining their access to the Oval Office than debunking the lie.</div><div>
</div><div>Speaking with host Joy Reid — who noted that her producers asked for comment from the Times but were rebuffed — MSNBC regular Maria Teresa Kumar scorched the Times, as well as reporter Ken Vogel, for the uncritical parroting of the president’s smear.</div><div>
</div><div>Pointing to Vogel’s story and noting his source was a Breitbart writer, Kumar explained, “The biggest challenge, Ken Vogel does not declare the source , that Peter Schweizer,&nbsp; is underwritten by the Mercer family — the Mercer family is a neo-facist family that underwrites Steve Bannon and the Breitbart Report so it is not credible.”</div><div>
</div><div>“What they had done so stealthily, so well, is that they know that if they can have any type of story in an established newspaper, as is the New York Times, that it any breeds a sense of legitimacy,” she continued. “Fox News takes it and Breitbart takes it, all the ultra-rightwings take it and say, ‘Look, the New York Times is saying it, so it must be true.’ That’s a lack of due diligence.”</div><div>
</div><div>“It’s disappointing in the New York Times, quite frankly,” she further explained. “When they try to equate something with Biden and Trump, they’re trying to make sure they continue having access to the president and that’s not the way to do it.”</div><div>
</div><div>With host Reid noting Vogel’s desire to not appear on her show, AM Joy regular Eric Boehlert called the Times reporting, including previous stories about Democrats and Hillary Clinton, “Timidity access journalism.”</div><div>
</div><div>Watch</div><div>
</div><div></div><div></div><div>anti-vaxxers sorta, but no mention of recent outbreak in US NW, amazing pro UN, dump on france; yemen mentioned but not 1 mil cholera</div><div>
</div><div>https://www.breitbart.com/news/un-warns-of-complacency-as-measles-cases-soar-worldwide-2/</div><div>=</div><div>story supports lauren so ref intercepts</div><div>=</div><div></div><div>ref mma</div><div>
</div><div>A professor who was caught agreeing to hide the oil funding behind a climate denial research paper named Breitbart News as a media outlet that could "likely help" publicize the research, according to emails unearthed as part of an undercover investigation by Greenpeace. Indeed, Breitbart News has frequently cited Princeton Emeritus Professor William Happer to promote the supposed "benefits" of climate-warming carbon pollution and argue against a "war on CO2" --&nbsp; including just days before the Greenpeace investigation was released. And now that Greenpeace has exposed Happer's ethically dubious actions, Breitbart News is defending Happer's behavior as "morally and scientifically unimpeachable."</div><div>
</div><div>On December 8, Greenpeace released the results of its investigation, in which Greenpeace UK reporters claiming to represent oil and coal companies asked two university professors to write industry-friendly research papers, and the professors agreed to do so without disclosing the fossil fuel funding behind them. According to Greenpeace, the investigation details "how fossil fuel companies can secretly pay academics at leading American universities to write research that sows doubt about climate science and promotes the companies' commercial interests."&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>As part of its report about the investigation, titled "Exposed: Academics-for-hire agree not to disclose fossil fuel funding," Greenpeace released a series of emails between its undercover staffers and the two academics, William Happer and Penn State Emeritus Professor Frank Clemente. In an email exchange in early November, a Greenpeace employee who was posing as an oil company consultant based in Beirut asked Happer if he could write a briefing paper "examin[ing] the benefits of fossil fuels to developing economies," and if there were any "US outlets or contacts you may have" that could help "get this research out far and wide." The Greenpeace employee also mentioned a London Times column praising carbon emissions by Matt Ridley, who Happer said was in "close touch" with a pro-carbon group called the CO2 Coalition that Happer helped organize. The Greenpeace employee then asked Happer if Ridley -- a Times columnist who also frequently writes op-eds published by The Wall Street Journal -- "would help to disseminate our research." Happer replied: "I am sure Matt Ridley will be interested in whatever you produce. The Breitbart news organization would also likely help, as would various blogs, syndicated columnists, etc."</div><div>
</div><div>Given Breitbart News' past coverage of Happer, it should come as no surprise that he mentioned Breitbart when asked to name media outlets that would promote his industry-funded, climate-denying research. For instance:</div><div>
</div><div>A June 3, 2015 Breitbart article touted a letter from Happer and two other physicists attacking the American Physical Society (APS) for a statement recognizing the reality of man-made climate change.</div><div>A January 22, 2015 Breitbart article purporting to list off "Ten reasons why the war on CO2 has done far more harm than good" approvingly quoted Happer referring to "the jihad against atmospheric carbon dioxide."</div><div>An October 24, 2014 Breitbart article quoted "climate expert" Happer as saying: "No chemical compound in the atmosphere has a worse reputation than CO2, thanks to the single-minded demonisation of this natural and essential atmospheric gas by advocates of government control and energy production. The incredible list of supposed horrors that increasing carbon dioxide will bring the world is pure belief disguised as science."</div><div>A September 2, 2011 Breitbart article quoted Happer as follows: "Disagreeing with [the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] is like going to Saudi Arabia and criticizing Muhammad."</div><div>On December 4, several weeks after Happer mentioned Breitbart News in his email to Greenpeace (and just days before Greenpeace released the results of its investigation), Breitbart News published yet another article touting Happer, this one titled "Carbon Dioxide Is Not Our Enemy." In it, Breitbart's John Hayward wrote a highly sympathetic profile of Happer's climate science denial, asserting that a white paper Happer co-authored was "meant to be a conversation-starter" and took "a non-confrontational approach with copious footnotes and supporting sources, inviting readers to perform their own research and gain a fuller understanding of CO2 and its benefits." Hayward also stated that Happer "lamented the vicious treatment given to scientists who showed even modest skepticism toward the link between CO2 and climate change."</div><div>
</div><div>After Greenpeace released its investigation, Breitbart News' James Delingpole rushed to Happer's defense with a December 8 article, in which he wrote: "What's clear is that [at] every stage Happer's behaviour was morally and scientifically unimpeachable." Delingpole alleged that Happer was not at fault because he made clear he "would only say in his paper what he believed anyway" and indicated that he did not "wish to benefit personally from the fee, but preferred that the money should go to a tax-exempt educational charity, which pays only his travel expenses."</div><div>
</div><div>It's true that Happer has a long track record of advocating for the purported "benefits" of carbon pollution, and it's also true that he requested in his emails to the undercover Greenpeace employee that "whatever fee would have come to me would go directly to the CO2 Coalition" -- the group Happer helped organized earlier this year. But Delingpole tellingly did not provide Happer's answer to two other questions Delingpole noted that Greenpeace had raised:&nbsp; "Would the CO2 Coalition be happy to take a direct donation on condition the donor remained anonymous?" and&nbsp; "Might Happer be able to get his paper peer-reviewed by sympathetic authors?"</div><div>
</div><div>This is where Happer's conduct is far from "unimpeachable," as Breitbart News claimed.</div><div>
</div><div>The Greenpeace staffer posing as a representative of the Middle Eastern oil company told Happer over email that "we are happy to make a direct donation to the CO2 Coalition, providing it is anonymous," and asked Happer whether "the CO2 Coalition voluntarily discloses its funders." Happer replied that he believed the CO2 Coalition isn't "required to make public any donors, although it is required to disclose them to the Internal Revenue Service." He also forwarded the question to William O'Keefe, another member of the Board of Directors of the CO2 Coalition and former Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the American Petroleum Institute. O'Keefe replied by suggesting that the oil company funnel the funds through the Donors Trust, which has been dubbed the "dark-money ATM" of the conservative movement:</div><div>
</div><div>We are under no obligation to identify donors, except to the IRS but I think that is just organizations. When people ask the IRS or a firms 990 [sic], the donor list is redacted. If the person participates in the Donors Trust, he/she can make the donation through that and have complete confidentiality.</div><div>
</div><div>Happer then forwarded O'Keefe's response to the undercover Greenpeace employee. As Greenpeace noted, in his emails "Happer also disclosed that [coal giant] Peabody Energy paid $8,000 in return for his testimony in a crucial Minnesota state hearing on the impacts of carbon dioxide. This fee was also paid to the CO2 Coalition."</div><div>
</div><div>The exchange between Happer and the undercover Greenpeace staffer exemplifies how the fossil fuel industry's funding of shoddy science can be hidden from public view, and how this strategy can apply not just to the research papers themselves but also to op-eds and other media coverage about them. Indeed, the other university professor that Greenpeace approached, Penn State's Frank Clemente, listed over email a series of op-eds he had written that had been published in newspapers across the United States, and then observed: "Note that in none of these cases is the sponsor identified. All my work is published as an independent scholar."</div><div>
</div><div>The other serious issue raised in Happer's emails relates to peer review, the process by which scholarly work is checked by a group of experts in the same field prior to publication. As Greenpeace documented, in his emails Happer "laid out details of an unofficial peer review process run by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a UK climate sceptic think tank, and said he could ask to put an oil-funded report through a similar review process, after admitting that it would struggle to be published in an academic journal." Specifically, Happer wrote that if he submitted the research paper to a peer-reviewed journal, it might "no longer make the case that CO2 is a benefit, not a pollutant, as strongly as I would like, and presumably as strongly your client would also like." Instead, Happer proposed a review process that would not be anonymous and would be conducted by the climate-denying Global Warming Policy Foundation, writing that although "purists might object that the process did not qualify as a peer review ... I think it would be fine to call it a peer review."</div><div>
</div><div>The Global Warming Policy Foundation recently conducted a similar review of another pro-carbon pollution paper, with Ridley -- who used to be a regular columnist for The Wall Street Journal -- deceptively alleging in the London Times that the paper had been "thoroughly peer reviewed."</div><div>
</div><div></div><div></div><div>NB progress means armed teachers</div><div>
</div><div>BB bs</div><div>report on the the February 14, 2018, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting shows no progress in implementing safety measures since the April 20, 1999, Columbine attack.</div><div>The Sun-Sentinel published their own report, which examines the use of unarmed security monitors. In lieu of guns, the security personnel had radios, yet two monitors spotted and recognized the gunman before shots were fired yet failed to call a Code Red to lock down campus.</div><div>
</div><div>The school had an armed resource officer on campus–Broward Deputy Scot Peterson–but he “remained sheltered [outside the school building] for nearly 48 minutes, watching as other officers enter the building.”</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>On March 15, 2018, Breitbart News published surveillance video allegedly showing Peterson outside Build 12 while the shooting was carried out inside. Broward Sheriff Scott Israel indicated that Peterson arrived at Building 12 roughly 90 seconds after the attack began.</div><div>
</div><div>He remained outside as the gunman went on a floor by floor shooting spree, that included stopping to reload five times.</div><div>
</div><div>Roughly six minutes after the attack was over, Peterson was still huddled up, sheltering in place outside. He told approaching Coral Springs officers that the gunman was on the second or third floor when, in fact, the gunman had already fled the building. Surveillance video shows the gunman–now unarmed–running across campus and going to Walmart, where he “ordered a drink at Subway.”</div><div>He left Walmart and went to McDonald’s, where he remained but a short time.</div><div>
</div><div>The commission instigating the Parkland shooting report noted the absence of safety as well, and voted 13-1 to recommend arming teachers at the school. Armed teachers are in the classrooms to defend themselves and their students whether the school’s resource officer enters the building or not.</div><div>
</div><div>On December 19, 2018, Breitbart News reported President Trump’s determination to include armed teachers in his school safety push. Trump made the point that it is “critical to have armed personnel available at a moment’s notice,” and he noted that teachers can be part such personnel.</div><div>
</div><div>Armed teachers are in classrooms to defend themselves and their students whether the security monitors call a Code Red or not.</div><div>
</div><div>AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News, the host of the Breitbart podcast Bullets with AWR Hawkins, and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.</div><div>
</div><div>2nd AmendmentPoliticsColumbineMarjory Stoneman Douglas High Schoolschool safetyschool shooting</div><div>
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</div><div>Alex Jones</div><div>Nationally Syndicated Radio Talkshow Host of The Alex Jones Show.</div><div></div><div>https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/01/04/exclusive-global-sea-level-data-agency-hits-back-after-attacks-breitbart-and-climate-science-deniers</div><div>
</div><div>A British government-backed research project that coordinates data from tide gauges around the world has hit back at climate science deniers who wrongly accused their scientists of faking findings.</div><div>
</div><div>The Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level, based in Liverpool, UK, at the National Oceanography Center, dismissed the claims made by two Australia-based scientists who both reject the well-established links between greenhouse gas emissions from human activity and global warming.</div><div>
</div><div>The claims gained wider attention after Breitbart’s James Delingpole, a climate science denier, screamed it was certain evidence PSMSL had been “caught red-handed tampering with raw data in order to exaggerate sea level rise.”</div><div>
</div><div>PSMSL said despite the claims, tide gauges and satellites showed that sea levels around the globe were rising and the rate of rise had increased in recent decades. Recent adjustments to the tide gauge data under scrutiny, in Yemen, had actually resulted in a decrease in the rate of sea level change, a spokesperson said.</div><div>
</div><div>The paper by Albert Parker and Cliff Ollier appeared in the new “open access” journal Earth Systems and Environment and claimed that data from a tide gauge in Aden, Yemen, did not show that sea levels there had risen.</div><div>
</div><div>As well as gaining attention from far right outlet Breitbart, the “research” was also covered uncritically by the UK’s MailOnline, which repeated the claim that PSMSL had made “arbitrary” adjustments to their data.</div><div>
</div><div>But senior scientists who are experts in sea level, and who spoke to Snopes and DeSmog, rubbished the claims, saying the study was flawed because the conclusions were unsupported by any methodology.</div><div>
</div><div>Unintelligible Research</div><div>Leading sea level scientist Dr. John Hunter told DeSmog the research was “close to being unintelligible.”</div><div>
</div><div>A spokersperson for PSMSL, at the National Oceanography Center, told DeSmog that MailOnline had approached them for comment, but published the story before scientists had a chance to respond. No other outlets contacted them to check.</div><div>
</div><div>The spokesperson wrote: “Any adjustment applied is never ‘arbitrary’ but is based on documentation of benchmark heights held by the PSMSL stretching back many years. An ongoing job of the PSMSL is to determine whether the adjustments made are correct, especially when new documentation becomes available or if there is a reanalysis of the existing documentation.”</div><div>
</div><div>PSMSL said the Aden, Yemen, gauge was assessed in 2008 and again in 2013 and this information was published on the PSMSL website.</div><div>
</div><div>“The 2013 reassessment resulted in a decrease (and not an increase) in the estimated 19th-20th century rate of sea level change at Aden,” the spokesperson wrote, adding that PSMSL was submitting a response to the journal.</div><div>
</div><div>“Global sea level is both rising and accelerating, and the data set compiled by PSMSL provides important input to this. This is detailed in the IPCC AR5 report chapters 3 and 13 … Specifically, PSMSL data inform us that sea level has risen by about 1-2 mm/year during the 20th century, and together with data from satellites, the rate over the last couple of decades has been over 3 mm/yr.”</div><div>
</div><div>Dr. John Hunter, a renowned expert on global sea level rise from the University of Tasmania, has analysed the Parker paper. He told DeSmog it was “hard to be sure what [Parker] has done” with the data because the paper, like others by the same author, were “close to being unintelligible.”</div><div>
</div><div>But he said the PSMSL broadly made two kinds of adjustments to data, which were “not arbitrary” but necessary.</div><div>
</div><div>One type of adjustment was to take the raw data and convert this to an average sea level height over a particular time period. A second was essentially a calibration exercise that matched the height of the zero mark on the tide gauge to a fixed point on the land.</div><div>
</div><div>Hunter said: “Broadly, PSMSL base the adjustments on whatever trustworthy information they have — if they don't have satisfactory information, then they don't convert that section of record from Metric to [Revised Local Reference data*]. They document what they do and why they do it.</div><div>
</div><div>“On the other hand, Parker's papers are often close to being unintelligible, so it is hard to be sure what he has done.</div><div>
</div><div>“Parker and Ollier (2017) appear to completely ignore the background information and instead fiddle around with the sea-level records only, matching break-points as best they can, using techniques which tend to yield adjusted records with virtually no trend.”</div><div>
</div><div>Hunter added that tide gauges and satellites all showed that sea levels were rising, and there was good understanding that this was being caused by thermal expansion of the oceans and the melting of glaciers and ice sheets.</div><div>
</div><div>Who is Albert Parker?</div><div>Dr. Albert Parker is a mechanical engineer and former Fiat motor company researcher who, as reported by DeSmog, has also published papers under the name Alberto Boretti. He appears to have begun using the name Parker in about 2013 — around the time he took a role at RMIT University, which he has since left.</div><div>
</div><div>Boretti has refused to say why he uses two different names. Boretti and his sometime research partner Cliff Ollier, of University of Western Australia, are both listed as members of Principia Scientific International.</div><div>
</div><div>PSI is a fringe climate science denial group that publishes materials that deny that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas.</div><div>
</div><div>Parker is prolific with his research and tends to target little-known and poorly regarded journals.</div><div>
</div><div>In early 2017, Parker and Ollier claimed that Australia had not warmed since the end of the 1800s, even though all temperature data shows a clear warming. The pair again argued that data, this time temperature readings, was being nefariously altered.</div><div>
</div><div>Journals Under Investigation</div><div>Parker and Ollier have co-authored several papers in a separate journal, Environmental Science: An Indian Journal, where the pair have also argued against human-caused climate change.</div><div>
</div><div>The publication Environmental Science: An Indian Journal is run by an organization called Trade Science Inc, which is owned by Indian “open access” publisher, OMICS.</div><div>
</div><div>OMICS is currently under investigation by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission for alleged deceptive practices. The FTC is questioning OMICS claims that its journals are properly peer-reviewed, and the agency alleges deceptive marketing practices. OMICS denies the allegations.</div><div>
</div><div>A brochure advertising the network of OMICS trading names includes Trade Science Inc, and a contact address for Trade Science Inc is the same as OMICS International’s headquarters in Hyderabad.</div><div>
</div><div>Parker has had several university affiliations in recent years, including RMIT, the now defunct University of Ballarat, and James Cook University.&nbsp; In his latest research he listed no academic affiliation.</div><div>
</div><div>In 2013, Parker wrote a paper with a fellow Australian, Thomas Watson, again arguing that sea levels were not rising.&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Watson also thinks global warming is not caused by rising greenhouse gas emissions, but instead says the Earth’s climate is controlled by “magnetism.”</div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div>https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/02/06/climate-science-deniers-new-york-american-museum-natural-history-rebekah-mercer</div><div>
</div><div>With friends like climate science deniers and alt-right megaphones like Breitbart, you have to wonder whether New York’s iconic American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) needs any enemies right now.</div><div>
</div><div>As the New York Times and others are reporting, the museum is facing calls from hundreds of scientists, its own curators, campaigners, and the public to drop rich benefactor and major Trump funder and ally Rebekah Mercer from its board of trustees.</div><div>
</div><div>As DeSmog reported in 2017, the foundation of the billionaire Mercer family has given millions to the museum, with latest figures putting their generosity at $3.8 million since 2013.</div><div>
</div><div>Rebekah Mercer, the daughter of hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer, heads the Mercer Family Foundation that has also been giving millions to climate science denial groups, including the notorious Heartland Institute.</div><div>
</div><div>But now the museum finds itself in the unenviable position of being defended, perhaps not surprisingly, by the Mercer-funded hyper-partisan outlet Breitbart and climate science denial characters from other Mercer-funded groups.</div><div>
</div><div>Deniers on the Defense</div><div>In a typically verbose screed on Breitbart, climate science denier James Delingpole called the scientists who had signed a letter protesting Mercer’s presence “basically frauds” and “imbeciles.”</div><div>
</div><div>Now climate science deniers have begun to circulate their own “open letter” calling for the AMNH to keep Mercer on the board and “not to cave in to this pressure.”</div><div>
</div><div>The letter reads: “The Earth has supported abundant life many times in the geological past when there were much higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It is quite likely that future generations will benefit from the enrichment of Earth’s atmosphere with more carbon dioxide.</div><div>
</div><div>“Make no mistake, the agitators are not defending science from quackery — quite the contrary!”</div><div>
</div><div>That statement itself is contradicted by every major scientific institution in the world and thousands of scientific studies over many decades.</div><div>
</div><div>Many of that letter’s signers are affiliated with groups funded by Mercer’s family foundation in recent years. There’s retired Professor Will Happer of the CO2 Coalition; Richard Lindzen, a fellow at the Cato Institute; and Craig Idso, the chairman of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change.&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>In a footnote, the letter states: “The views represented in this letter are those of the individual signatories and not the institutions they are affiliated with. Institutions are listed simply for identification purposes.”</div><div>
</div><div>The first signatory is Professor J. Scott Armstrong of the University of Pennsylvania.</div><div>
</div><div>Marketing professor Armstrong has spoken at several Heartland Institute conferences and was handed a “lifetime achievement” award at the institute’s March 2017 conference in Washington D.C.</div><div>
</div><div>The Mercer’s family foundation, which Rebekah leads, has given some $5.78 million to Heartland since 2008. Both Rebekah and father Robert attended Heartland’s D.C conference and have recently extended their funding to other anti-science groups.</div><div>
</div><div>As DeSmog reported, at the D.C conference Armstrong compared the apparently heroic work of climate science deniers to New York’s brave 9/11 firefighters.</div><div>
</div><div>Many of the names on the pro-Mercer petition have also signed numerous other letters denying the risks of human-caused climate change.</div><div>
</div><div>Pro-Science Petition Spammed</div><div>What’s more, it appears that some have targeted the pro-science public petition calling for Mercer's removal — which is separate from the open letter signed by scientists — by adding fake names.</div><div>
</div><div>In a statement, Beka Economopoulos of the Natural History Museum, a mobile science museum which is helping co-ordinate the letters, and petitions, said:</div><div>
</div><div>“There have been about a dozen fake names added to the public sign-on list, ranging from the inventor of the steam engine James Watt, to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels.</div><div>
</div><div>“It’s not clear if the names were added as a simple prank or in a deliberate attempt to damage our credibility, but either way we quickly removed them and are keeping a close eye to ensure only legitimate names are added. It’s sad that people will go so far to protect Rebekah Mercer as to invoke the Nazi Minister of Propaganda, but here we are.”&nbsp;&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>The museum’s famous astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson is known for his impassioned attacks on climate science deniers.</div><div>
</div><div>In 2017 when DeSmog asked Tyson about the Mercers' financial support, he stressed how his position showed the independence of science from funding, but added: “All knowledge has value, especially knowledge of how people distort knowledge.”</div><div>
</div><div>In response to questions about the current protests, Tyson told DeSmog: “I have nothing to add or subtract from my previous correspondence with you on this matter.”</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div></div><div></div><div>
</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/election-03918/trumps-vote-suppression-team-doing-gops-dirty-work</div><div>
</div><div>Anyone who favors expanding voting rights should be relieved by Wednesday’s demise of President Trump’s so-called Election Integrity Commission. But the panel’s right-wing agenda to rig the voting process to benefit the GOP will continue.</div><div>
</div><div>There’s plenty to cheer about when white nationalists like Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, the vice-chair, and voter suppressors like the Heritage Foundation’s Hans von Spakovsky were discredited by a panel run in a secretive, conspiratorial and clownish manner. But these Republicans are not giving up on their plan to create new barriers to eligible voters.</div><div>
</div><div>“Amid many challenges for the institutions of American democracy, this was a rousing win,” said Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center for Justice. “No doubt, there is fallout to come… The commission has vanished, but its pernicious objectives persist. The White House has asked the Department of Homeland Security to take up the commission’s work—a dangerous and appalling idea. Earlier this morning, the president took to Twitter to renew calls for voting restrictions.”</div><div>
</div><div>Indeed, Kobach signaled his next move to Politico, which noted, “The Kansas official said he expects officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and political appointees overseeing that agency to take over the commission’s work and begin efforts to match state voter rolls to federal databases of noncitizens. He insisted he was not disappointed with the president’s decision.”</div><div>
</div><div>“It’s the right move,” Kobach said. “It’s a shifting in tactics from having the investigation be done by a federal commission to having it be done by a federal agency. The agency has a greater ability to move quickly to get the investigation done.”</div><div>
</div><div>The GOP Strategy Unmasked</div><div>
</div><div>Kobach’s is referring to a strategy employed by the most fervent partisan Republicans to position red-run states to keep new registrants from voting and do mass purges of infrequent but otherwise legal voters from their rolls. In short, it draws on intentionally sloppy data-mining to creates thousands of false positives that are then used to stymie voters. That porous data has been used in recent cycles in Georgia to delay approving new registrations and to accelerate mass purges of voter rolls. But it's not just Georgia.</div><div>
</div><div>In 2014, Florida’s top election official proposed using DHS’s problematic citizenship data to purge voter rolls. In response, county election supervisors rebelled and blocked it—because they still felt the sting of the 2000 election, when Secretary of State Katherine Harris used sloppy data-mining (seeking former felons who could not vote under that state's laws) to purge tens of thousands of eligible voters before that year's presidential election.</div><div>
</div><div>If Kobach has his way, the contours of that sordid history will repeat itself, including using a DHS database that was never designed to be an authoritative list of every U.S. citizen. But in the years since Harris’ Florida purge, the right-wing strategy has become clear.</div><div>
</div><div>Republicans like Kobach strategically target weak points in the voting process. They pinpoint areas in the process that are ambiguous, or where there’s no authoritative national data to counter their claims of purported illegal activity.</div><div>
</div><div>For example, there is no federal agency that tracks so-called voter fraud, which these right-wingers define as someone impersonating someone else at the polls to vote more than once, and has become the go-to justificatiom for red-run states to erect new barriers to voting century. Since there’s no single federal agency that tracks so-called voter fraud, it becomes a useful propaganda tool for Republicans because it's left to acacdemics and the media to debunk it, which these partisans routinely ignore.</div><div>
</div><div>The latest high-profile example of this narrative is Trump's thoroughly debunked claim that millions of Democrats illegally voted more than once to deprive him of 2016’s popular vote majority. But that lie, recited again by Trump’s press office when announcing the commission’s demise, resonates among supporters who want to believe all Democrats are crooks despite vast documentation by academics and the press that voter fraud barely exists. In the absence of an authoritative federal accounting, it becomes an easy pretext for red states to pass laws to, as they purport, police the process’ integrity. In reality, they thwart Democratic voters....</div><div>
</div><div>kobaCh announced this on Bb</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>
</div><div>Breitbart radio is a cesspool</div><div>Celebrities like Seth Rogen are boycotting SiriusXM because it broadcasts Steve Bannon's radio program. And while Bannon says there is nothing untoward about his show, the fact is that Breitbart radio is a bigoted and misogynistic dumpster fire.</div><div>
</div><div>Must read: Nina Mast showed how Breitbart promoted a defamatory and xenophobic Swedish website that harassed journalists and had ties to neo-Nazis.</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>https://www.alternet.org/environment/how-right-wing-media-totally-distorted-positive-news-climate-change</div><div>
</div><div>denier</div><div></div><div>https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/guess-who-breitbart-and-sarah-palin-are-blaming-california-wildfires</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;collection of right-wing websites teamed up with half-term nitwit Sarah Palin to spread a fake news story that appeared to pin the Northern California wildfires that have tragically killed at least 40 people onto an immigrant man who was arrested at a park in Sonoma, California. Jesus Fabian Gonzales—who “often sleeps in the park and is well-known to law enforcement”—was arrested Sunday after starting a small fire that he says he lit to stay warm, and one that “was so small a responding sheriff’s deputy was able to mostly put it out before firefighters arrived.” Gonzales was taken into custody without incident for one count of arson, but by Tuesday, Breitbart, InfoWars, and other sites were blaring sensationalist headlines, including one that stated that the “homeless arsonist behind Calif. wildfire that killed 40 people is an illegal alien”:</div><div>
</div><div>Breitbart News and InfoWars offered no evidence to link the man’s arrest to the fires and their accounts of the man’s arrest were disputed the same day by Sonoma County Sheriff Rob Giordano.</div><div>
</div><div>“There’s a story out there he’s the arsonist for these fires. That is not the case. There is no indication he is related to these fires at all,” Giordano said in a news conference also broadcast on the department’s Facebook page and area TV stations. “I just did want to kill that speculation right now so we didn’t have things running too far out of control.”</div><div>
</div><div>Speculation from, say, Palin, who tweeted that “bet you not a single mainstream news organization is going to cover this story. Not PC or something.” No, it’s just fake, dumbass. In fact, USA Today notes that Sonoma County Sheriff’s Sgt. Spencer Crum said that “the only questions Breitbart News and InfoWars asked were about Gonzales's ethnicity and whether Immigration and Customs Enforcement had placed a detainer on him, which would hold him for an additional 48 hours at the jail.” It’s almost like they have an agenda here!</div><div>
</div><div>And one of the fake news websites that ran with the story also appeared to think California was being hit by one giant fire, rather than the at least one dozen major fires that firefighters are courageously battling, and some hours away from where Gonzales was arrested. But when your goal is to blame immigrants for just about anything, who cares about the facts?</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>Major story about ties between Mercers, Breitbart, and neo-Nazis</div><div>Some of this was evident already, it's true. But the confirmation and salacious details are absolutely wild. BuzzFeed's Joe Bernstein broke a major story this week about how Breitbart under Steve Bannon used Milo Yiannopoulos to give editorial control to white nationalists and neo-Nazis. The lengthy story is definitely worth reading in full. We pulled out a few things worth noting, including how the entire affair is orchestrated by the GOP donors Robert and Rebekah Mercer. In retrospect, 60 Minutes' failure to confrontSteve Bannon about Yiannopoulos or the Mercers is even more of a failure than it was at the time.</div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div>https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-study-deniers-2489397710.html</div><div>
</div><div>no link</div><div>
</div><div>Climate Deniers Twist Study in Attempt to Question Science</div><div>A study released last week suggesting that the world may have more time to keep warming under 1.5 degrees C than previously thought is being twisted by deniers to question scientific proceedings and accuracy.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Politico reported Monday morning that powerful deniers are focusing on misinterpretations of the study to support efforts to roll back climate policy and question climate science at large (as our own Denier Roundup predicted last week).</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>The study represents "exactly the type of debate discussion scientists need to be having," Heartland Institute President Tim Huelskamp told Politico. "This article proved that there can be a lot of debate about the fundamental issues."</div><div>
</div><div>The study's authors pushed back against denier misuse of their findings. In an op-ed in the Guardian last week, they wrote that "after reasonably accurate initial reporting, suddenly our paper was about a downgrading of the threat of climate change, when it was actually nothing of the kind.</div><div>
</div><div>"Debating the current level of human-induced warming and how it relates to the 1.5° C goal feels a bit like discussing how best to steer a spacecraft into orbit around Saturn while Delingpole [James, Breitbart] and Stringer [Graham, a Labour MP] are urging their readers to question whether the Earth goes round the Sun," they added.</div><div>
</div><div>For a deeper dive:</div><div>
</div><div>Politico, Ars Technica. Commentary: The Guardian, Myles Allen and Richard Millar op-ed</div><div></div><div></div><div>4. Breitbart and Fox News serve up talking points for Jeff Sessions' DACA-rescinding press conference.</div><div>
</div><div>If one needs more evidence the Trump administration takes its tone and language directly from Fox News and Breitbart, look no further than Jeff Sessions' press conference this week. As liberal watchdog Media Matters notes, Sessions' primary talking points were ripped off directly from the two outlets. Breitbart/Fox and Sessions both claimed DACA was “amnesty” (it’s not), that the “child migrant surge” was due to DACA (it’s not), that DACA recipients take American jobs (they don’t), and that DACA was “unconstitutional” (it isn’t).&nbsp; &nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Steve Bannon may have exited the White House, but his propaganda reach hasn’t. Recently, there have been reports Trump’s new Chief of Staff John Kelly was trying to wean Trump off InfoWars, but it’s doubtful the two pillars of Breitbart and Fox News will go anywhere anytime soon. After all, where else would they trial balloon their talking points?&nbsp;&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div>
</div><div>error no BB?</div><div>
</div><div>http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/donald-trump-fake-news-government</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Pruitt appears to be the most Trump-like member of Donald Trump’s cabinet, and now the federal agency he is tasked with leading, the Environmental Protection Agency, has officially adopted the president’s most pernicious habit.</div><div>
</div><div>When Trump recently visited hurricane-ravaged Houston he praised the Coast Guard while knocking the journalists tasked with covering the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey.&nbsp;&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>“Think of it, almost 11,000 people by going into winds that the media would not go into . . . unless it’s a really good story,” Trump said, before gesturing toward the media.</div><div>
</div><div>That same day, the Associated Press published a story about the flooding of toxic waste sites in Houston, noting that Scott Pruitt’s EPA was still not on the ground. The agency responded in Trump-like fashion, attacking the press to distract from legitimate questions.</div><div>
</div><div>Echoing Trump’s longstanding habit of singling out specific reporters for attacks, the EPA called out one reporter on the story by name in a news release titled “EPA Response to the AP’s Misleading Story.” Remarkably, the statement starts with a personal attack on Washington-based AP reporter Michael Biesecker:</div><div>
</div><div>Despite reporting from the comfort of Washington, Biesecker had the audacity to imply that agencies aren’t being responsive to the devastating effects of Hurricane Harvey. Not only is this inaccurate, but it creates panic and politicizes the hard work of first responders who are actually in the affected area.</div><div>
</div><div>Biesecker’s AP colleague Jason Dearen, however, visited seven toxic sites known as “Superfund sites,” the most contaminated toxic waste sites in the country, in and around Houston — by boat, vehicle and on foot.&nbsp;&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>After the waters receded in the town of Crosby, Texas, situated between two Superfund sites, “a sinkhole the size of a swimming pool had opened up and swallowed two cars,” Biesecker wrote. “The acrid smell of creosote filled the air.” The Saturday report also noted that the “EPA had not yet been able to physically visit the Houston-area sites.”</div><div>
</div><div>In its unprecedented attack, the EPA accused the AP of leaving out information about the EPA’s other efforts to monitor the toxic land sites.</div><div>
</div><div>“Once again, in an attempt to mislead Americans, the Associated Press is cherry-picking facts, as EPA is monitoring Superfund sites around Houston and we have a team of experts on the ground working with our state and local counterparts responding to Hurricane Harvey,” EPA associate administrator Liz Bowman wrote in a statement. “Anything to the contrary is yellow journalism.”</div><div>
</div><div>The release went on to criticize past reporting by Biesecker, arguing that he has a “history of not letting the facts get in the way of his story.” To illustrate this, the EPA linked to a sensational Breitbart story that claimed the AP faced a “CNN-like scandal” after a July story Biesecker wrote inaccurately characterized an interaction between Pruitt and Dow Chemical CEO Andrew Liveris. Biesecker’s story, based on EPA schedules, initially said the two met for half an hour at a Houston hotel. The AP’sstory turned out to be wrong because they were reporting on inaccurate meeting schedules provided by the EPA. The AP corrected its story when the formal meeting was canceled.</div><div>
</div><div>Besides the personal criticisms it leveled against the report’s author, the EPA’s statement did not point to any specific factual inaccuracies in the AP’s story. The report’s co-author, who reported from on the ground in Texas, was not singled out by the EPA statement. In fact, the EPA appeared to confirm the AP’s report overall, noting that more than a dozen sites have been flooded and that EPA has not investigated them in person — only monitoring the waste sites by plane until the floodwaters receded.</div><div>
</div><div>When pressed by reporters about the aggressive statement, agency officials continued their attack on the media.t</div><div>
</div><div>“We understand you are very focused on our press release; we hope you will apply the same focus to the facts, which include that a national reporter from a wire service publishing [sic] inaccurate and misleading stories about the agency and it’s [sic] staff on the ground,” Bowman wrote in an email to Politico over the weekend. “We think that is more important than who drafted a press release.”</div><div>
</div><div>Earlier this year Trump called the press the “enemy of the American people.” Beyond the damage of his rhetoric, however, Trump’s war on so-called fake news through the official channels of the federal government can only have a chilling effect.</div><div>
</div><div>For its part, the AP standing by its story and its reporters.</div><div>
</div><div>“AP’s exclusive story was the result of on the ground reporting at Superfund sites in and around Houston, as well as AP’s strong knowledge of these sites and EPA practices,” AP’s executive editor Sally Buzbee said in a statement. “We object to the EPA’s attempts to discredit that reporting by suggesting it was completed solely from ‘the comforts of Washington’ and stand by the work of both journalists who jointly reported and wrote the story.”&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Sophia Tesfaye is Salon's deputy politics editor</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>
</div><div>==</div><div>Rightwing news site Breitbart has a new business plan. The self-described home of the “alt-right” started selling fidget spinners this week. The spinners’ centers are decorated with the florid face of its newly returned leader, former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, above the hashtag #WAR.</div><div>
</div><div>But the media company is going to have to sell a lot of the $7.95 spinners if it wants to make up for the campaign that is destroying its advertising base.</div><div>
</div><div>Donald Trump and Bannon parted ways shortly after the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and Trump’s refusal to lay the blame for the violence at the feet of white supremacists and neo-Nazis. The evening of his departure, Bannon appeared at the offices of Breitbart News and led an editorial meeting, returning directly to the role he had given up to advise Trump and pledging to take down his enemies inside the White House and in the wider Republican party.</div><div>
</div><div>While Bannon helped Trump use the power of the internet to fire up his base, those tools have now been turned against him. His return, and the alt-right’s involvement in Charlottesville, have ignited an online campaign to force companies to pull their ads from Breitbart. It seems to be working.</div><div>
</div><div>Mark Irvine, senior data scientist at search marketing company WordStream, calculates that Breitbart’s ad revenue has declined by 51% since November as advertisers have fled.</div><div>
</div><div>View image on Twitter</div><div>View image on TwitterTwitter Ads info and privac</div><div>
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</div><div>bb</div><div>Cry more. http://trib.al/xBDahxE&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>7:02 PM - 11 Jun 2017</div><div>Photo published for Luis Gutierrez Whines: Breitbart News Coverage of Illegal Immigrants, Muslim Refugees Too Harsh -...</div><div>Luis Gutierrez Whines: Breitbart News Coverage of Illegal Immigrants, Muslim Refugees Too Harsh -...</div><div>Luis Gutierrez Whines: Breitbart News Coverage of Illegal Immigrants, Muslim Refugees Too Harsh</div><div>
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</div><div>bb</div><div>Ramadan 2017 has claimed 1,000 lives that we know of. Our tally of attacks so far: http://trib.al/QdHZZbs&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>2:21 PM - 10 Jun 2017</div><div>Photo published for Ramadan Rage 2017: The Complete List of Jihadist Attacks Around the World - Breitbart</div><div>Ramadan Rage 2017: The Complete List of Jihadist Attacks Around the World - Breitbart</div><div>Ramadan Rage 2017: The Complete List of Jihadist Attacks Around the World</div><div>
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</div><div>&nbsp;Follow</div><div>Mike Cernovich ?@Cernovich</div><div>Breitbart fired a journalist to appease fake news media. Here's how to respond! https://www.wesearchr.com/bounties/support-katie-mchugh-fired-from-breitbart-for-telling-the-tr …</div><div>
</div><div>10:21 AM - 5 Jun 2017</div><div>Photo published for Support Katie McHugh: Fired From Breitbart For Telling The Truth</div><div>Support Katie McHugh: Fired From Breitbart For Telling The Truth</div><div>Katie needs your help, America.</div><div>
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