02-18-2018, 11:25 PM
*** 19-Feb-18 World View -- Special prosecutor Robert Mueller issues farcical indictment of Russian trolls
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
****
**** Special prosecutor Robert Mueller issues farcical indictment of Russian trolls
****
![[Image: g180218b.jpg]](http://Media.GenerationalDynamics.com/ww2010/g180218b.jpg)
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton (Reuters)
On Friday, the Justice Department's Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller,
after a year of investigation, brought an indictment against a Russian
"troll factory," the St. Petersburg based Internet Research Agency,
along with various trolls and other officials connected to the agency.
It's hard to overestimate the farcical nature of the indictment. I
wrote about the Internet Research Agency in 2014, and I've written
about Russian trolls several times since then. Any journalist or
analyst writes about a variety of political or international subjects
is attacked by Russian trolls. I've been attacked by dozens, perhaps
hundreds of Russian trolls since 2014.
Here are some excerpts from the indictment:
<QUOTE>"2. Defendant INTERNET RESEARCH AGENCY LLC
("ORGANIZATION") is a Russian organization engaged in operations
to interfere with elections and political processes. Defendants
MIKHAIL IVANOVICI1 BYSTROV, MIKHAIL LEONIDOVICH BURCHIK ... and
VLADIMIR VENKOV worked in various capacities to carry out
Defendant ORGANIZATION's interference operations targeting the
United States. From in or around 2014 to the present, Defendants
knowingly and intentionally conspired with each other ... to
defraud the United States by impairing, obstructing, and defeating
the lawful functions of the government through fraud and deceit
for the purpose of interfering with the U.S. political and
electoral processes, including the presidential election of 2016.
3. Beginning as early as 2014, Defendant ORGANIZATION began
operations to interfere with the U.S. political system, including
the 2016 U.S. presidential election. ... Defendants CONCORD and
PRIGOZHIN spent significant funds to further the ORGANIZATION's
operations and to pay the remaining Defendants, along with other
uncharged ORGANIZATION employees, salaries and bonuses for their
work at the ORGANIZATION.
4. Defendants, posing as U.S. persons and creating false
U.S. personas, operated social media pages and groups designed to
attract U.S. audiences. These groups and pages, which addressed
divisive U.S. political and social issues, falsely claimed to be
controlled by U.S. activists when, in fact, they were controlled
by Defendants. Defendants also used the stolen identities of real
U.S. persons to post on ORGANIZATION-controlled social media
accounts. Over time, these social media accounts became
Defendants' means to reach significant numbers of Americans for
purposes of interfering with the U.S. political system, including
the presidential election of 2016."<END QUOTE>
I'm sorry, I can't stop laughing. The CIA and Special Prosecutor's
office has spent hundreds of millions of dollars sleuthing out these
criminals, and discovered that Russian trolls hired by Russia's "troll
factory," the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg Russia, are
on blogs and social media sites posting misleading comments. This was
something that was well known to me and many other people.
Here's what I wrote in August 2014:
<QUOTE>While Russia's president Vladimir Putin maintains an
iron grip on the state-run media, the internet remains a big
problem for Putin, as he's had little ability to control Twitter
and other social media.
Putin has responded to this problem in a bizarre way. According
to documents examined by an analyst firm, since April a Russian
firm called the [i]Internet Research Agency, with a 2014
budget of $10 million, has been hiring hundreds of "internet
trolls" to challenge any online article critical of Russia.
Each troll is expected to post comments on blogs and news sites 50
times per day. The comments range from lies and disinformation to
abuse and profanity. Each blogger is to maintain six Facebook
accounts, posting three times a day in each. On Twitter, they're
expected to manage 10 accounts and tweet 50 times a day. [Emphasis
added]"<END QUOTE>[/i]
I get attacked by American trolls as well, but apparently the reason
that Russian trolls were indicted is because they didn't register with
the US government. US Department of Justice and Russia Today
****
**** How the Russian trolls do their jobs
****
Let's take some example of attacks by Russian trolls, so we can see
what the Special Prosecutor might be talking about. I was never
attacked by trolls over the election because I never wrote about the
election. However, I am always attacked by Russian trolls whenever I
write about any of the following subjects:
Let's take an example: Shooting down Malaysia Airlines flight MH17
passenger plane by the Russians in eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014.
We actually knew within minutes that the Russians had shot it down
with a missile, because Igor Strelkov, the commander of the Russian
forces in east Ukraine, immediately tweeted the following:
<QUOTE>"We shot down AN-26 [military transport] near the city
Torez, Donetsk People's Republic ... We warned, don't fly in our
sky."<END QUOTE>
Strelkov's militias had shot down at least two Ukrainian AN-26s in the
previous week, and was bragging that he'd shot down a third. The
tweet was taken down a few minutes later, when he learned that he'd
shot down a passenger plane.
Russian media and trolls went into full-on troll mode, making one
ridiculous claim after another: Strelkov's tweet had never occurred;
the US had shot down MH17 to embarrass Russia; the airplane was struck
by a meteor; no living people were aboard the plane as it flew on
autopilot from Amsterdam, where it had been pre-loaded with "rotting
corpses."
Russian trolls will say that no evidence exists that Russians shot
down MH17. Actually, there are literally thousands of pieces of
evidence, including intercepted phone calls, photos, analyzed and
authenticated, videos, forensic examinations, witness statements,
satellite images, and radar data. There was a major Dutch investigation
that proved with no doubt that
Russians shot down MH17 with a Russian-made Buk missile. But trolls
will constantly say, "there's no evidence."
****
**** Russian trolls are Bashar al-Assad's use of chemical weapons
****
As another example, Russian trolls are always on the attack when you
write about the use of chemical weapons, including Sarin gas and
chlorine gas, by Syria's president Bashar al-Assad. Once again, they
say that "there's no evidence." But once again, there are been
several thorough investigations of al-Assad's 2013 Sarin gas attack,
and there are thousands of pieces of evidence that al-Assad used Sarin gas on ordinary civilians,
including forensic collections and analyses, photos, videos,
eyewitness testimony, doctors' testimony, the UNSC report, analyses of
the UNSC report, and so forth, proving al-Assad's repeated use of
chemical weapons, including Sarin gas and chlorine gas.
Trolls try to use highly emotional arguments to avoid facts. One
troll named "Jan Fearing" told me a darling story about her trip to
Damascus where she met a mother who thought al-Assad was wonderful.
One troll argument I hear frequently is that al-Assad is popular, but
once again that's irrelevant, since all the worst genocidal monsters
are popular, including Adolf Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Mao Zedong and Pol
Pot. You can't succeed as a genocidal monster if your people don't
support you, and that means you have to be popular with your own
people to be a genocidal monster.
****
**** Comparing Russian trolls to Chinese hackers
****
I find the Russian trolls to be pretty much idiots. They're usually
working from prepared scripts, and they usually don't know anything
about the facts except what their trollmasters have told them.
I wasn't writing about election campaign issues, so I didn't encounter
trolls bashing Hillary and boosting Bernie Sanders and Trump, but I
assume that the trolls who did that were just as incompetent on those
subjects as they were on the subjects that I write about. During the
election campaign, there must have been millions of highly partisan
messages posted by hundreds of partisan organizations. How would the
average Facebook user ever be influenced by a Russian troll message
when it's surrounded by hundreds of other messages competing for the
user's attention? I don't see how it's even remotely possible that
the Russian trolls had any effect at all on the election, or that
they'll affect future elections.
In fact, when he announced the indictments, deputy attorney general
Rod Rosenstein said:
<QUOTE>"There is no allegation in the indictment that any
American was a knowing participant in the alleged unlawful
activity. There is no allegation in the indictment that the
charged conduct altered the outcome of the 2016
election."<END QUOTE>
This doesn't surprise me in the least. I don't see even the remotest
possibility that these trolls influenced the election, and despite the
media hysteria, I don't any possibility that they will have any
influence at all in the 2018 and 2020 elections. The current hysteria
is fatuous.
I personally believe that the use of trolls has backfired for the
Russians, not because of the Mueller's indictment, but because
everyone knows about Russian trolls, so that anyone who genuinely
wants to support Russia in one of these discussions is automatically
assumed to be a troll.
That's why Mueller's indictments are so farcical. They target people
in Russia who will never be extradited, and they reveal "crimes" that
everyone has been aware of for years.
People in the mainstream media are hoping against hope that these
indictments are just the first step in bringing charges against Donald
Trump. We'll all be watching to see whether they get their wishes.
Finally, let's take one more quote from the indictment:
<QUOTE>"57. After the election of Donald Trump in or around
November 2016, Defendants and their coconspirators used false
U.S. personas to organize and coordinate U.S. political rallies in
support of then president-elect Trump, while simultaneously using
other false U.S. personas to organize and coordinate
U.S. political rallies protesting the results of the 2016
U.S. presidential election. For example, in or around November
2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators organized a rally in
New York through one ORGANIZATION-controlled group designed to
"show your support for President-Elect Donald Trump" held on or
about November 12, 2016. At the same time, Defendants and their
co-conspirators, through another ORGANIZATION-controlled group,
organized a rally in New York called "Trump is NOT my President"
held on or about November 12, 2016. Similarly, Defendants and
their co-conspirators organized a rally entitled "Charlotte
Against Trump" in Charlotte, North Carolina, held on or about
November 19, 2016."<END QUOTE>
So the trolls were holding pro-Trump rallies and anti-Trump rallies in
two different places in New York on the same day. These are truly the
gang that couldn't shoot street. We can all feel safe now that
they're no longer at large. Oh, wait. All these trolls are in
St. Petersburg Russia, so they're still at large, and they'll never be
caught.
As a Senior Software Engineer, I'm familiar with the entire range of
online attacks, whether by trolls or for espionage, or for cyber
warfare. I find this hysteria over the Russian troll "threat to
democracy" to be a total joke.
By contrast, the threat from China's use of online espionage a million
times greater. There are dozens of Chinese high tech companies whose
only job is to spy and steal secrets from the United States. China
has stolen hundreds or thousands of terabytes of data from defense and
law enforcement systems, as well as from energy, transportation,
government, technology, health care, finance, telecommunications,
media, manufacturing and agriculture systems.
There are some real threats out there, not from Russian trolls but
from Chinese hackers. We should be focusing on the real dangers to
our society. US Dept. of Justice and The Conversation(5-Oct-2017)
Related Articles
KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Department of Justice, Rod Rosenstein,
Robert Mueller, Russia, Ukraine, Crimea, Syria,
St. Petersburg, troll factory, Internet Research Agency,
Bashar al-Assad, Igor Strelkov, AN-26, China,
Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, Russian Buk 9M38 missile
Permanent web link to this article
Receive daily World View columns by e-mail
Contribute to Generational Dynamics via PayPal
John J. Xenakis
100 Memorial Drive Apt 8-13A
Cambridge, MA 02142
Phone: 617-864-0010
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
Forum: http://www.gdxforum.com/forum
Subscribe to World View: http://generationaldynamics.com/subscribe
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
- Special prosecutor Robert Mueller issues farcical indictment of Russian trolls
- How the Russian trolls do their jobs
- Russian trolls are Bashar al-Assad's use of chemical weapons
- Comparing Russian trolls to Chinese hackers
****
**** Special prosecutor Robert Mueller issues farcical indictment of Russian trolls
****
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton (Reuters)
On Friday, the Justice Department's Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller,
after a year of investigation, brought an indictment against a Russian
"troll factory," the St. Petersburg based Internet Research Agency,
along with various trolls and other officials connected to the agency.
It's hard to overestimate the farcical nature of the indictment. I
wrote about the Internet Research Agency in 2014, and I've written
about Russian trolls several times since then. Any journalist or
analyst writes about a variety of political or international subjects
is attacked by Russian trolls. I've been attacked by dozens, perhaps
hundreds of Russian trolls since 2014.
Here are some excerpts from the indictment:
<QUOTE>"2. Defendant INTERNET RESEARCH AGENCY LLC
("ORGANIZATION") is a Russian organization engaged in operations
to interfere with elections and political processes. Defendants
MIKHAIL IVANOVICI1 BYSTROV, MIKHAIL LEONIDOVICH BURCHIK ... and
VLADIMIR VENKOV worked in various capacities to carry out
Defendant ORGANIZATION's interference operations targeting the
United States. From in or around 2014 to the present, Defendants
knowingly and intentionally conspired with each other ... to
defraud the United States by impairing, obstructing, and defeating
the lawful functions of the government through fraud and deceit
for the purpose of interfering with the U.S. political and
electoral processes, including the presidential election of 2016.
3. Beginning as early as 2014, Defendant ORGANIZATION began
operations to interfere with the U.S. political system, including
the 2016 U.S. presidential election. ... Defendants CONCORD and
PRIGOZHIN spent significant funds to further the ORGANIZATION's
operations and to pay the remaining Defendants, along with other
uncharged ORGANIZATION employees, salaries and bonuses for their
work at the ORGANIZATION.
4. Defendants, posing as U.S. persons and creating false
U.S. personas, operated social media pages and groups designed to
attract U.S. audiences. These groups and pages, which addressed
divisive U.S. political and social issues, falsely claimed to be
controlled by U.S. activists when, in fact, they were controlled
by Defendants. Defendants also used the stolen identities of real
U.S. persons to post on ORGANIZATION-controlled social media
accounts. Over time, these social media accounts became
Defendants' means to reach significant numbers of Americans for
purposes of interfering with the U.S. political system, including
the presidential election of 2016."<END QUOTE>
I'm sorry, I can't stop laughing. The CIA and Special Prosecutor's
office has spent hundreds of millions of dollars sleuthing out these
criminals, and discovered that Russian trolls hired by Russia's "troll
factory," the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg Russia, are
on blogs and social media sites posting misleading comments. This was
something that was well known to me and many other people.
Here's what I wrote in August 2014:
<QUOTE>While Russia's president Vladimir Putin maintains an
iron grip on the state-run media, the internet remains a big
problem for Putin, as he's had little ability to control Twitter
and other social media.
Putin has responded to this problem in a bizarre way. According
to documents examined by an analyst firm, since April a Russian
firm called the [i]Internet Research Agency, with a 2014
budget of $10 million, has been hiring hundreds of "internet
trolls" to challenge any online article critical of Russia.
Each troll is expected to post comments on blogs and news sites 50
times per day. The comments range from lies and disinformation to
abuse and profanity. Each blogger is to maintain six Facebook
accounts, posting three times a day in each. On Twitter, they're
expected to manage 10 accounts and tweet 50 times a day. [Emphasis
added]"<END QUOTE>[/i]
I get attacked by American trolls as well, but apparently the reason
that Russian trolls were indicted is because they didn't register with
the US government. US Department of Justice and Russia Today
****
**** How the Russian trolls do their jobs
****
Let's take some example of attacks by Russian trolls, so we can see
what the Special Prosecutor might be talking about. I was never
attacked by trolls over the election because I never wrote about the
election. However, I am always attacked by Russian trolls whenever I
write about any of the following subjects:
- Russia's invasion of eastern Ukraine
- Russia's shooting down of the MH17 passenger plane with a Buk
missile
- Russia invading and annexing Crimea
- Vladimir Putin bragging about how he fooled the West by lying
about his plans to invade and annex Crimea
- Syria's Bashar al-Assad using Sarin gas on innocent civilians
- Syria's Bashar al-Assad using chlorine gas to force women and
children into the open so he can slaughter them en masse with
missiles
Let's take an example: Shooting down Malaysia Airlines flight MH17
passenger plane by the Russians in eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014.
We actually knew within minutes that the Russians had shot it down
with a missile, because Igor Strelkov, the commander of the Russian
forces in east Ukraine, immediately tweeted the following:
<QUOTE>"We shot down AN-26 [military transport] near the city
Torez, Donetsk People's Republic ... We warned, don't fly in our
sky."<END QUOTE>
Strelkov's militias had shot down at least two Ukrainian AN-26s in the
previous week, and was bragging that he'd shot down a third. The
tweet was taken down a few minutes later, when he learned that he'd
shot down a passenger plane.
Russian media and trolls went into full-on troll mode, making one
ridiculous claim after another: Strelkov's tweet had never occurred;
the US had shot down MH17 to embarrass Russia; the airplane was struck
by a meteor; no living people were aboard the plane as it flew on
autopilot from Amsterdam, where it had been pre-loaded with "rotting
corpses."
Russian trolls will say that no evidence exists that Russians shot
down MH17. Actually, there are literally thousands of pieces of
evidence, including intercepted phone calls, photos, analyzed and
authenticated, videos, forensic examinations, witness statements,
satellite images, and radar data. There was a major Dutch investigation
that proved with no doubt that
Russians shot down MH17 with a Russian-made Buk missile. But trolls
will constantly say, "there's no evidence."
****
**** Russian trolls are Bashar al-Assad's use of chemical weapons
****
As another example, Russian trolls are always on the attack when you
write about the use of chemical weapons, including Sarin gas and
chlorine gas, by Syria's president Bashar al-Assad. Once again, they
say that "there's no evidence." But once again, there are been
several thorough investigations of al-Assad's 2013 Sarin gas attack,
and there are thousands of pieces of evidence that al-Assad used Sarin gas on ordinary civilians,
including forensic collections and analyses, photos, videos,
eyewitness testimony, doctors' testimony, the UNSC report, analyses of
the UNSC report, and so forth, proving al-Assad's repeated use of
chemical weapons, including Sarin gas and chlorine gas.
Trolls try to use highly emotional arguments to avoid facts. One
troll named "Jan Fearing" told me a darling story about her trip to
Damascus where she met a mother who thought al-Assad was wonderful.
One troll argument I hear frequently is that al-Assad is popular, but
once again that's irrelevant, since all the worst genocidal monsters
are popular, including Adolf Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Mao Zedong and Pol
Pot. You can't succeed as a genocidal monster if your people don't
support you, and that means you have to be popular with your own
people to be a genocidal monster.
****
**** Comparing Russian trolls to Chinese hackers
****
I find the Russian trolls to be pretty much idiots. They're usually
working from prepared scripts, and they usually don't know anything
about the facts except what their trollmasters have told them.
I wasn't writing about election campaign issues, so I didn't encounter
trolls bashing Hillary and boosting Bernie Sanders and Trump, but I
assume that the trolls who did that were just as incompetent on those
subjects as they were on the subjects that I write about. During the
election campaign, there must have been millions of highly partisan
messages posted by hundreds of partisan organizations. How would the
average Facebook user ever be influenced by a Russian troll message
when it's surrounded by hundreds of other messages competing for the
user's attention? I don't see how it's even remotely possible that
the Russian trolls had any effect at all on the election, or that
they'll affect future elections.
In fact, when he announced the indictments, deputy attorney general
Rod Rosenstein said:
<QUOTE>"There is no allegation in the indictment that any
American was a knowing participant in the alleged unlawful
activity. There is no allegation in the indictment that the
charged conduct altered the outcome of the 2016
election."<END QUOTE>
This doesn't surprise me in the least. I don't see even the remotest
possibility that these trolls influenced the election, and despite the
media hysteria, I don't any possibility that they will have any
influence at all in the 2018 and 2020 elections. The current hysteria
is fatuous.
I personally believe that the use of trolls has backfired for the
Russians, not because of the Mueller's indictment, but because
everyone knows about Russian trolls, so that anyone who genuinely
wants to support Russia in one of these discussions is automatically
assumed to be a troll.
That's why Mueller's indictments are so farcical. They target people
in Russia who will never be extradited, and they reveal "crimes" that
everyone has been aware of for years.
People in the mainstream media are hoping against hope that these
indictments are just the first step in bringing charges against Donald
Trump. We'll all be watching to see whether they get their wishes.
Finally, let's take one more quote from the indictment:
<QUOTE>"57. After the election of Donald Trump in or around
November 2016, Defendants and their coconspirators used false
U.S. personas to organize and coordinate U.S. political rallies in
support of then president-elect Trump, while simultaneously using
other false U.S. personas to organize and coordinate
U.S. political rallies protesting the results of the 2016
U.S. presidential election. For example, in or around November
2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators organized a rally in
New York through one ORGANIZATION-controlled group designed to
"show your support for President-Elect Donald Trump" held on or
about November 12, 2016. At the same time, Defendants and their
co-conspirators, through another ORGANIZATION-controlled group,
organized a rally in New York called "Trump is NOT my President"
held on or about November 12, 2016. Similarly, Defendants and
their co-conspirators organized a rally entitled "Charlotte
Against Trump" in Charlotte, North Carolina, held on or about
November 19, 2016."<END QUOTE>
So the trolls were holding pro-Trump rallies and anti-Trump rallies in
two different places in New York on the same day. These are truly the
gang that couldn't shoot street. We can all feel safe now that
they're no longer at large. Oh, wait. All these trolls are in
St. Petersburg Russia, so they're still at large, and they'll never be
caught.
As a Senior Software Engineer, I'm familiar with the entire range of
online attacks, whether by trolls or for espionage, or for cyber
warfare. I find this hysteria over the Russian troll "threat to
democracy" to be a total joke.
By contrast, the threat from China's use of online espionage a million
times greater. There are dozens of Chinese high tech companies whose
only job is to spy and steal secrets from the United States. China
has stolen hundreds or thousands of terabytes of data from defense and
law enforcement systems, as well as from energy, transportation,
government, technology, health care, finance, telecommunications,
media, manufacturing and agriculture systems.
There are some real threats out there, not from Russian trolls but
from Chinese hackers. We should be focusing on the real dangers to
our society. US Dept. of Justice and The Conversation(5-Oct-2017)
Related Articles
- How to confront a Chinese troll (23-Dec-2017)
- Russia launches its massive disinformation campaign (14-Oct-2015)
- The talking points of the Russian and Chinese internet trolls
- Reader comments and questions on Syria, Russia, and Russian trolls (08-Oct-2016)
- Hacking of Democratic National Committee computers - I blame the victim (31-Dec-2016)
- Russia uses an army of trolls on social media (Internet Research Agency) (15-Aug-2014)
- U.S. charges China's People's Liberation Army with cyber espionage (20-May-2014)
KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Department of Justice, Rod Rosenstein,
Robert Mueller, Russia, Ukraine, Crimea, Syria,
St. Petersburg, troll factory, Internet Research Agency,
Bashar al-Assad, Igor Strelkov, AN-26, China,
Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, Russian Buk 9M38 missile
Permanent web link to this article
Receive daily World View columns by e-mail
Contribute to Generational Dynamics via PayPal
John J. Xenakis
100 Memorial Drive Apt 8-13A
Cambridge, MA 02142
Phone: 617-864-0010
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
Forum: http://www.gdxforum.com/forum
Subscribe to World View: http://generationaldynamics.com/subscribe
