No puppet!

Драматическое падение акций Фейсбука на прошлой неделе (самый крупный однодневный спад в истории) может быть продолжено.

Комиссия британского парламента опубликовала на выходных промежуточный отчет расследования Disinformation and ‘fake news’: https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmcumeds/363/36302.htm

В отчете жестко критикуется роль Фейсбука и Cambridge Analytica в распространении лживой пропаганды.

On June 19, Britain would have voted Remain. What changed Britain so directly, so dramatically, so invisibly? pic.twitter.com/DS54PP9Eae

— Carole Cadwalladr (@carolecadwalla) July 27, 2018

Есть также раздел Russian influence in political campaigns.

The Committee heard evidence of a co-ordinated, long-standing campaign by the Russian Government to influence UK elections and referenda, and similar evidence of foreign interference is being investigated by the US Congress in respect of the 2016 US Presidential Election. Thanks to these hearings we know that, during the Presidential Election, the Russians ran over 3,000 adverts on Facebook and Instagram to promote 120 Facebook pages in a campaign that reached 126 million Americans. In further evidence from Facebook given to our Committee, we know that the Russians used sophisticated targeting techniques and created customized audiences to amplify extreme voices in the campaign, particular those on sensitive topics such as race relations and immigration.
Disinformation is an unconventional warfare, using technology to disrupt, to magnify, and to distort. According to research from 89up, the communications agency, Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik published 261 media articles on the EU Referendum, with an anti-EU sentiment, between 1 January 2016 and 23 June 2016. Their report also showed that RT and Sputnik had more reach on Twitter for anti-EU content than either Vote Leave or Leave.EU, during the Referendum campaign. A joint research project by the Universities of Swansea and of Berkeley, at the University of California, also identified 156,252 Russian accounts tweeting about #Brexit and that they posted over 45,000 Brexit messages in the last 48 hours of the campaign.
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmcumeds/363/36308.htm

( Read more... )

В Британии продолжается скандал. Российские связи лидеров Leave.EU оказались намного более глубокими, чем представлялось ранее. Более того, они врали про эти связи не только в публичных заявлениях, но и в своих показаниях в парламенте. Учитывая связи этих деятелей с Трампом, над всей этой историей нависло грозовое облако.

Andy Wigmore, spokesman for the Leave.EU campaign and the business partner of Arron Banks, the biggest funder of Brexit, passed confidential legal documents to high-ranking officials at the Russian embassy and then denied it to parliament.
The documents related to George Cottrell, an aide to Nigel Farage who was with him on the campaign trail for Donald Trump in July 2016. Cottrell was arrested by the FBI and charged with 21 counts of money laundering, bribery and wire fraud.
Damian Collins, chair of the culture, media and sport select committee, said that Banks and Wigmore appeared to have misled parliament and “what we really need to know is why”. He added: “It makes you question whose side they are on.”
https://amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jun/16/leave-eu-russia-arron-banks-andy-wigmore



Упомянутый Джордж Коттрелл (известный по прозвищу “Posh George”) был арестован ФБР в июле 2016 после того, как вместе с Найджелом Фаражем посетил съезд республиканской партии. Ему предъявили 21 обвинение, но в результате скостили обвинение до одного, а срок - с 20 лет до 8 месяцев, предположительно в обмен на сотрудничество со следствием.

Биография персонажа весьма примечательна.

When contacted in 2014 by FBI agents pretending to be drug traffickers, he promised to launder their cash for a fee in 'complete anonymity and security' through his offshore accounts, the documents claim.
His mother was the Penthouse 'pet of the month' in October 1973, under the pseudonym Frances Cannon, describing herself as 'daughter of a landowner'.
The images were reprinted in the magazine in 1977 after she was linked romantically to Prince Charles. <...>
His uncle is Lord Hesketh, a colourful hereditary peer who set up a Formula One team in the 1970s and was a Tory minister under Baroness Thatcher.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4099792/Penthouse-Pet-mother-Ukip-activist-facing-jail-admitting-money-laundering-says-turned-life-meeting-Nigel-Farage.html

Российские связи Коттрелла пытался расследовать Daily Beast нехитрым способом изучения его аккаунта в LinkedIn:

Cottrell is listed as one of just 71 followers of Moldinconbank, a controversial Moldovan bank that was alleged to be at the very center of the “Russian Laundromat” scam that laundered billions in illicit funds from Moscow through fraud, rigged state contracts and tax evasion. Some of those laundered state funds reportedly went to pay foreigners who were acting on behalf of the Kremlin, such as the leader of a small Polish political party who was later arrested on charges of spying for Russia. <...>
Another of the Cottrell account’s “interests” is the bank FBME, an entity which was officially based in Tanzania but had foreign offices in two countries: Cyprus and Russia. According to a U.S. investigation the bank was linked to Bashar al Assad and al Qaeda as well as a $230m fraud against the Russian people uncovered by Sergei Magnitsky, which led to a series of anti-corruption laws being introduced around the world in his name. In 2014, the bank was banned from accessing the American market by the U.S. Treasury after money laundering allegations.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/meet-posh-george-the-shady-money-man-tangled-up-with-brexit-russia-and-trump

( Read more... )

Юмористическая книжка "A child's first book of Trump", выпущенная в июле 2016, заканчивается призывом в случае провала бежать в Канаду.

Don't respond to its brags, its taunts, or its jeers;
Ignoring a Trump is Trump's biggest fear.
But if that plan fails and it keeps coming forth,
I hear there's an absence of Trumps in the North.

Но не все так просто со страной победившего глобализма и мультукультурности. Две небольшие канадские компании оказались замешаны в спецоперациях по выборам в 2016 и 2017.



Одна из них - AggregateIQ использовалась миллиардером Робертом Мерсером, загадочным спонсором Трампа, для операции влияния на избирателей через Фейсбук во время Брекзита. Запутанные связи пытается распутать репортаж Guardian.

The key to understanding how a motivated and determined billionaire could bypass ourelectoral laws rests on AggregateIQ, an obscure web analytics company based in an office above a shop in Victoria, British Columbia. It was with AggregateIQ that Vote Leave (the official Leave campaign) chose to spend £3.9m, more than half its official £7m campaign budget. As did three other affiliated Leave campaigns: BeLeave, Veterans for Britain and the Democratic Unionist party, spending a further £757,750. “Coordination” between campaigns is prohibited under UK electoral law, unless campaign expenditure is declared, jointly. It wasn’t.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/07/the-great-british-brexit-robbery-hijacked-democracy



( Read more... )