#political activity should never stop at voting or even just engaging with your rep. help people!! THAT'S where the real struggle is! that's

[kenobihater]

why do liberals talk about the simple act of voting like they're the last defenders of some besieged trenches in ww1...

[jessejunkocreates]

What Now? ORGANIZE If the political climate has you eager to activate and participate the next step is to find others who want to jump in and join forces, organize, communicate, and focus. Since the inauguration we’ve seen so many of our sisters and brothers pledge to pay attention and be more engaged. You’re doing a tremendous amount of work, and we want to help you keep the momentum. Gathering is a great way to keep each other accountable and energized. Start a closed Facebook group or email list to talk about what matters to you in your area, use it to schedule and coordinate meeting in person. Make a plan, we’re better when we’re one! Find out who your representatives are and when and where they meet with constituents. Go to town hall meetings, ask tough questions, share what you’re concerned about.

The link below is one of the very best articles I’ve read about how to effectively participate in politics: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/02/how-to-beat-trump/515736/?utm_source=fark&utm_medium=website&utm_content=link&ICID=ref_fark

Indivisible’s Action Network has an incredible guide too, this is very comprehensive: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5855a354cd0f68bab2089b40/t/588eaa1ebebafb2132666bcd/1485744745727/IndivisibleGuide_2017-01-29_v8.pdf

If you can get a group together to attend your Town Board meetings and talk about protecting your community and values in a structured way you will have a much better chance of raising awareness of your issues. Figure out what’s important, who cares about what, what everyone’s individual strengths and weaknesses are. Spilt up into groups to focus on specific causes. There is a great app called “Countable” you can download to see what is being voted on, make suggestions to your representatives, share their voting history, hold them accountable!

In closing, I have copied and pasted a story from a friend who shared some undercover work infiltrating a Pro Trump organization. The organization on the right is very serious, and if we really want to make a difference and protect our values we must match them in organization and dedication:

“Better read what ‘we’ are up against. Long. Read it anyway.

From a friend on FB: A VIEW FROM THE INSIDE OF THE OTHER SIDE Last night I attended a Pro-President “little d” meeting. My summary will be a bit long, however, I want to pass on what we learned, In the art of war it is always advised to know what your enemy is doing, that is why there are spies. Two of the groups I’m involved with have a committee that is subscribed to little d’s supporters newsletters, are members of various FB groups (with specially created profiles) and are on his mailing list for updates. Last night 3 of us went to a group meeting. Two women and one man. What we saw and heard was both scary and informative. The meeting was led by 5 men and we counted approximately 70 people in the room including us. We counted 13 women. They started the meeting with a pledge of allegiance to the flag. Then they jumped into discussions, the first being the Marches. It was a lot of WTF and why don’t they just shut up. They discussed the report that there were no arrests so that meant that the police and the media were lying. The leader(s) then gave them an “action item” to find anything to dispute the no arrests report and to put pressure on the police to arrest protestors. Several people in the group admitted to being at the March to try to interfere, but felt they were bullied by the Marchers and had to stop “for their own safety” (actual quote). They questioned why so many people “got away with it” (Marching). It seemed to be a hot point with them. They moved on to reports from the teams. They have teams and committees with specific tasks, ie: daily phone calls and collect tallies of who makes phone calls to their Reps. It appears they call throughout the day, and each call is either a different issue or their personal favorite. They have a team who monitor the public blogs and event postings of the Liberal groups (specifically mentioned Indivisible and MoveOn.) They laughed at the Indivisible Guide when one leader said “the Liberals will never get organized and carry any of this out, the snowflakes give up too easily, a little heat and they melt”. They talked about the “visit your representatives office event” that was planned for earlier in the day which was posted on MoveOn and all over FB. They also were at their reps offices, and a handful admitted to going to the Democratic representatives office in their own district to have their voice counted. They have a team who spies on FB posts. When the man who was with us asked how to do it, he was told that if he was a member of Pantsuit Nation it’s almost an automatic in into most closed groups, and then once you are in one, you can get invited to others. Someone on their team joins all the public and open groups. Their report included reading a few actual posts, in a mimic whining voice, where the members were posting their concerns and frustrations and why bother. They actually cheered this. One leader applauded the report and said, “We don’t care if they like what we have to say, we don’t need them to agree with us. We just need them to give up, shut up and stay out of our way.” They discussed some of the issues and the recent signed orders from the WH. Some of this discussion sounded intelligent, as if they had researched not only the issue, but how to present it to get the buy-in from the group. It felt to us like a persuasion/programming tactic. They broke into their teams and anyone not on a team was asked to choose one to sit in on. We each went to a different team. Each team talked about their mission and their strategy. The phone team assigned times for each phone call and a number to text after you called. They practiced scripts. The Anti-Abortion team talked about how to plan protests at PP and other clinics, to find the names of Doctors who perform abortions and out them by protesting at their offices and clinics. The communications team discussed the content of their newsletter, the content they were borrowing from other newsletters and articles from Briebart that they wanted to circulate. We didn’t get the names of the other teams that we didn’t sit in on but there were 4 others. We found out that this group used to be a young republican group and after the election and seeing the actions of the Liberals, they changed to a support little d group to stand up for him and against Liberals. I don’t believe all groups are this scary, however, they appear to be organized. One of the members in one of my groups, changed her registration to Republican so she could see what they do from the inside. She gets phone calls from a phone bank, sometimes several times a week, about issues and actions she should take, she gets their weekly newsletter and she attended a local Rep meeting. Her report is similar only in that they are very organized, take daily actions and communicate often. So knowing this, what do we do? Our recommendations: 1.) Don’t give up. 2.) If you Marched, email your local police to write a thank you for their part in keeping the peace. 3.) Get organized. Even if you are not with an organized local group, you can organize yourself. Set aside certain times for certain actions based on what you CAN do. We are all under time constraints and work/family/life commitments, however, find what time you CAN give. **We have found that being with an organized local group that you can see and touch helps us to stay focused and feeling our strength. 4.) Determine what actions you CAN take – when and how many phone calls, emails, visits, protests CAN you do. Focus on that. 5.) Limit your time reading all the comments on FB. Too many can become overwhelming and can end up feeling like you are carrying a larger burden. 6.) Find and cross post the good results that are happening, so we can all see the progress. It may be small steps like the postponement of a cabinet position approval/rejection, however, every step counts. If you have ever attempted to lose weight, you remember how some days feel like nothing is happening, and then little by little the results start to appear. Whatever goal you have reached in little steps, remember the little steps got the momentum started. Stay strong. 7.) Find support when you need it. It’s been shown that if you vent to someone who is also venting, you both stay in the same spot. If you can vent to someone who will HEAR you without judgement and without chiming in, you can both get through it faster and back to feeling stronger. If you both need to vent, take turns; 2 minutes each venting and really HEAR each other, then switch places. When the venting is done, take a positive action. 8.) Take a break. Do something positive for yourself every day (more a few times during the day if you need it) that doesn’t include thinking about politics – exercise, spas, reading a good book, writing a love letter. Find something that bring you joy and shifts your energy. 9.) Don’t give up. We are Stronger Together. The opposition may believe that a snowflake is fragile when the heat is on, however, although the snowflakes may melt, enough heat can also cause a boil. Together, we can be an avalanche, and if we can focus our boiling angry energy we can be the heat that they fear. I refer to him as “little d”. He has not earned my respect of capitalization nor use of his full name. Plus, on social media I don’t want to add to the algorithm that counts how many people are talking about him.”

[gibsongirlselections]

Election Meddlers Find a Scapegoat

Like me, until recently you got most of your news from PeaceData.net. It was where you looked to form your opinions, including the all-important one about which way to vote. What you missed on PeaceData you caught up with via Facebook memes and Tweets from people you do not know.

Or maybe not. Maybe like nearly everyone on planet Earth you have no idea what I’m talking about and never looked at the now-defunct PeaceData site. That reality should pretty much end the discussion, but this is 2020. So you must know by now that Facebook claims an unvisited web site named PeaceData was actually a Russian influence operation targeting voters in the United States, all the while posing as an independent news outlet. PeaceData’s sneaky tactics included hiring real freelance “journalists” to write about U.S. politics and racial tensions from their parents’ basements.

PeaceData also operated 13 Facebook accounts, now suspended, supposedly using fake identities and “coordinated inauthentic behavior” by people with some kind of link “to individuals associated with past activity by the Internet Research Agency,” the Russkie company which U.S. intelligence officials say was part of Comrade Trump’s 2016 win.

Yep, that old story: Russians, social media, blah. To say PeaceData itself truly does not matter, especially in relation to the attention it has received in death, gives too much credit to not mattering. What does matter is how the intel community, quasi-private tech firms, the media, and the Democrats worked together to exaggerate the threat and create the narrative outcome of “foreign influence.” Pay attention; this is the magician revealing how the trick is done.

It seems the Russians have gotten so good at influencing cow-like Americans that only five percent of English-language articles on PeaceData actually concerned the U.S. election, out of over 700 articles published. You’d think no one would have even noticed they existed. However, a company called Graphika nonetheless told Facebook to conclude “this facet of the operation suggests an attempt to build a left-wing audience and steer it away from Biden’s campaign.” See, the conclusion from Graphika is by making almost no impact whatsoever, PeaceData was actually “trying harder and harder to hide.” It worked; Graphika found most of the English-language posts achieved only single-digit engagement.

Back to net nanny Graphika for a moment. We don’t know who funds them. Their venture capital was raised privately, in two tranches of about three million dollars each, in 2014 and 2019. We do know who they work with. Their current “Innovation Officer” is Camille François, who once worked for Google’s analytics offshoot Jigsaw before quitting to run a project for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, alongside now Graphika CEO John Kelly (no relation to the Marine.) Their December 2018 reporting helped Democrats “prove” the Russians used Facebook and Twitter to influence the 2016 election. Graphika also has ties to the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the Defense Department’s Minerva Initiative. If you look at their stuff you realize they write like spooks, talk like spooks, and snitch out news sites like spooks.

What is missing from Graphika’s spooky work is any evidence whatsoever of any actual influence on the only thing that matters: how people vote. Graphika offers nothing quantitative, claiming only that by using American freelancers PeaceData was part of the “fabric” of communities and this made them credible. A step up from 2016 efforts, which relied on what Graphika said were foreign “trolls who typically researched American life so they could more effectively pose as U.S. citizens online. One key trick was to watch American TV shows like House of Cards.”

One is inclined to imagine here the customer service rep with a south Indian accent who asks you to call him “Mike” and wonders “How it goes my man in that American town of Iowa?” Older readers, please substitute Boris and Natasha voices.

So who are these nefarious American writers unknowingly selling out their country? The New York Times tracked down one who ended up writing for no money somehow, though PeaceData rates of $75-$200 per article fluttered below average (lots of unknown sites recruit freelancers for small payouts; PeaceData used Guru). This particular PeaceData journalist also once played Rusty in Starlight Express before selling insurance. One of his recent articles outlines his battle with dementia. Sorry to pick on the poor guy, but the NYT profiled him and it seems using such services to influence an election may not be the best use of those rubles.

He did write a nice piece claiming Susan Rice would have made a fine Vice President. One point in her favor was “I challenge anyone to find a video, or statement which shows Susan Rice raising her temper, shouting, acting hysterical or making comments.” Rice of course is known for her signature profanity and temper; here’s The Washington Post calling her out for describing Lindsey Graham as a “piece of sh*t.” Her f-bombs are legendary. She famously flipped the bird at Richard Holbrooke, told France’s UN. ambassador “you’re not going to drag us into your sh*tty war” and drew complaints of disrespect from allies on the UN Security Council.

But before just calling a Susan Rice-like bullsh*t on this whole sad attempt to frighten Americans into believing foreigners are here to steal our precious bodily Internet fluids, let’s go have a look at some of what else PeaceData had to say.

For example, here’s a quote from a PeaceData article about Q-Anon: “The effort to mainstream conspiracy is meant to distract from the true mechanisms of exploitation and alienation, while allowing for the continued consolidation of capital and upending norms with power grabs. As liberal institutions fail and capitalism continues to deliver uncertainty, the extension of a false mythos—that promises to yield revolutionary change and free the masses—gives allure to desperately confused people.”

Ok, that was too easy, somebody just held on to their Socialism 101 textbook. Another PeaceData article, on the post office, is lifted idea-for-idea from the NYT: “One way or another, the truth always comes out and with President Donald Trump, his motives were especially apparent after a news conference in the White House Briefing Room. He admitted on Thursday he opposed additional funding for the United States Postal Service (USPS) in order to make it more difficult to deliver mail-in ballots. Trump’s desire to not expand on voting by mail further sent society into a chaotic state amidst a pandemic.” The NYT said “President Trump stirred new questions on Thursday about whether he would seek to hold up new money to the Postal Service to impede mail-in voting this fall in the middle of the pandemic.” Kinda the same thing, but one is Russkie propaganda and the other is the New York Times.

It is very unclear that any of this is illegal. Foreign organizations hire American writers all the time. And the line between “taking an editorial stance” and “influencing an election” lies closer to how paranoid you are than anything in the law. That did not stop the FBI from telling social media to act against PeaceData based on Graphika tattling. The action Facebook (and Twitter, who called PeaceData “Russian state actors”) took against PeaceData was based entirely on so-called violations of Terms of Service. That allows the social media giants to show off how they are doing something to, whatever, save democracy. Facebook was not asked to return $480 in advertising money PeaceData spent.

PeaceData doesn’t matter by itself. The real value in this fluffy jihad against a no-name site is to create a talking point to allow the MSM and Democrats to announce again that Trump is being helped by a foreign power, that our electoral process is corrupt if Trump wins, and to revive whatever distant warm, wet memories the faithful had of Russiagate. A little daydreaming that maybe the old tricks will work this time where they have failed ever before.

For the rest of us, no big deal, just a glimpse behind the scenes of another Deep State information op where under the cover of blaming foreign collusion, corporate America, the intel community, and the media hide their own collusion, here, in the Twilight Zone of democracy.

Peter Van Buren, a 24-year State Department veteran, is the author of We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People, Hooper’s War: A Novel of WWII Japan, and Ghosts of Tom Joad: A Story of the 99 Percent.

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