IS FACEBOOK’S “WAR ROOM” TAKING AIM

By Michael Liedtke - Associated Press - Thursday, October 18, 2018

MENLO PARK, Calif. (AP) — In an otherwise innocuous part of Facebook’s expansive Silicon Valley campus, a locked door bears a taped-on sign that reads “War Room.” Behind the door lies a nerve center the social network has set up to combat fake accounts and bogus news stories ahead of upcoming elections.

Inside the room are dozens of employees staring intently at their monitors while data streams across giant dashboards. On the walls are posters of the sort Facebook frequently uses to caution or exhort its employees. One reads, “Nothing at Facebook is somebody else’s problem.”

That motto might strike some as ironic, given that the war room was created to counter threats that almost no one at the company, least of all CEO Mark Zuckerberg, took seriously just two years ago - and which the company’s critics now believe pose a threat to democracy.

Days after President Donald Trump’s surprise victory, Zuckerberg brushed off assertions that the outcome had been influenced by fictional news stories on Facebook, calling the idea “pretty crazy.”

But Facebook’s blase attitude shifted as criticism of the company mounted in Congress and elsewhere. Later that year, it acknowledged having run thousands of ads promoting false information placed by Russian agents. Zuckerberg eventually made fixing Facebook his personal challenge for 2018.

The war room is a major part of Facebook’s ongoing repairs. Its technology draws upon the artificial-intelligence system Facebook has been using to help identify “inauthentic” posts and user behavior. Facebookprovided a tightly controlled glimpse at its war room to The Associated Press and other media ahead of the second round of presidential elections in Brazil on Oct. 28 and the U.S. midterm elections on Nov. 6.

“There is no substitute for physical, real-world interaction,” said Samidh Chakrabarti, Facebook’s director of elections and civic engagement. “The primary thing we have learned is just how effective it is to have people in the same room all together.”

More than 20 different teams now coordinate the efforts of more than 20,000 people - mostly contractors - devoted to blocking fake accounts and fictional news and stopping other abuses on Facebook and its other services. As part of the crackdown, Facebook also has hired fact checkers, including The Associated Press, to vet new stories posted on its social network.

Facebook credits its war room and other stepped-up patrolling efforts for booting 1.3 billion fake accounts over the past year and jettisoning hundreds of pages set up by foreign governments and other agents looking to create mischief.

But it remains unclear whether Facebook is doing enough, said Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters For America, a liberal group that monitors misinformation. He noted that the sensational themes distributed in fictional news stories can be highly effective at keeping people “engaged” on Facebook - which in turn makes it possible to sell more of the ads that generate most of Facebook’s revenue.

“What they are doing so far seems to be more about trying to prevent another public relations disaster and less so about putting in meaningful solutions to the problem,” Carusone said. “On balance, I would say they that are still way off.”

Facebook disagrees with that assessment, although its efforts are still a work in progress. Chakrabarti, for instance, acknowledged that some “bugs” prevented Facebook from taking some unspecified actions to prevent manipulation efforts in the first round of Brazil’s presidential election earlier this month. He declined to elaborate.

The war room is currently focused on Brazil’s next round of elections and upcoming U.S. midterms. Large U.S. and Brazilian flags hang on opposing walls and clocks show the time in both countries.

Facebook declined to let the media scrutinize the computer screens in front of the employees, and required reporters to refrain from mentioning some of the equipment inside the war room, calling it “proprietary information.” While on duty, war-room workers are only allowed to leave the room for short bathroom breaks or to grab food to eat at their desks.

Although no final decisions have been made, the war room is likely to become a permanent fixture at Facebook, said Katie Harbath, Facebook’s director of global politics and government outreach.

“It is a constant arms race,” she said. “This is our new normal.”

Judicial Watch Uncovers Soros/State Department Collusion!

Judicial Watch Uncovers Soros/State Department Collusion! 

Judicial Watch has taken the lead in exposing the dubious ties between State Department and the radical Soros operation.
 
We just released 49 pages of new documents forced out from the State Department detailing the hand-in-glove relationship between the Obama Sate Department and Soros, Inc.  

The documents deal primarily with the activities of Soros’ top operative in Albania, Andri Dobrushi, the director of Soros’ Open Society Foundation-Albania, who was actively engaged in channeling funding to what Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban calls Soros’ “mercenary army.” The documents show U.S. grant money flowing through non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that profess to promote “civil society,” while in fact attacking traditional, pro-American groups, governments and policies.

We filed a May 26, 2017, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of State and USAID after they failed to respond to March 31, 2017, FOIA requests (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development (No. 1:17-cv-01012)).

The records reveal that Soros operative Dobrushi was the first person on a list of invitees by then U.S. Ambassador to Albania Donald Lu to attend an “election rollout event” held at the U.S. Embassy on April 27, 2015. The event was intended to “launch U.S. assistance for the June local elections,” being held in Tirana, Albania. As we previously reported in an April 4, 2018, press release, Ambassador Lu has been closely associated with Soros and the socialist government in Albania, which he assisted by denying U.S. visas to conservative jurists from the conservative party in Albania. Lu has since been nominated by the Trump administration to become US Ambassador to Kyrgyzstan.

Additionally, a June 18, 2015, email from Ilva Cuko, a Program Specialist in the Public Affairs Office of the U.S. Embassy in Tirana, invites several people, including Dobrushi, to a “Donors Grant Reviewing meeting” at the U.S. Embassy, in which the participants would review applications for grants submitted by NGOs seeking U.S. taxpayer grant money from the State Department. Cuko says she would “like to invite you in a discussion on these proposals. Your valuable input and comments will be used by the U.S. Embassy’s Democracy Commission, which has the ultimate authority in awarding the grants.”

Cuko on August 28, 2015, also invited Dobrushi to attend another U.S. Embassy Democracy Commission Small Grants Program “Grant Proposal Technical Review” meeting on September 3 at the U.S. Embassy. At this meeting, Cuko said they would focus on applications dealing with “anticorruption.” Ironically, under the leadership of Soros’ close friend, socialist Prime Minister Edi Rama, who took power in 2013, corruption in Albania has soared, with cannabis trafficking in the country increasing 300 percent between 2016 and 2017.

In a February 22, 2016, email, Cuko again invites several people, including Dobrushi, to another “Donors Grant Reviewing Meeting” held at the U.S. Embassy on February 26 where Dobrushi would be able to influence Embassy officials who have “the ultimate authority in awarding the grants.”

Another document, titled “Guidelines for the Democracy Commission Small Grants Program,” shows that the applications for grants that Soros’ operative was reviewing are part of a program the State Department runs in Eastern Europe and the Baltic States called the “Democracy Commission Small Grants Program,” which is supposed to “promote grassroots democracy.” The guidelines also say that the program “supports initiatives of local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) engaged in building the social and intellectual foundations of democracy, the democratic resolution of problems, strengthening civil society watchdog activities, and the institutionalization of open, pluralistic political processes.”

In addition to Albania, Judicial Watch also has filed FOIA lawsuits against the State Department and USAID for records about funding and political activities of George Soros’ Open Society Foundations in, Macedonia, Romania and Colombia.

In an earlier document production connected to this lawsuit, we obtained 32 pages of records showing that the Obama administration sent U.S. taxpayers’ funds to a Soros-backed group that used the money to fund left-wing political activities in Albania. That included working with the country’s socialist government to push for highly controversial judicial “reform.”

The records also detail how the Soros operation helped the State Department review grant applications from other groups for taxpayer funding. USAID funds were funneled to Soros’ left-wing Open Society Foundations in Albania, particularly the Soros operation efforts to give the socialist government greater control of the judiciary. USAID reportedly gave $9 million in 2016 to the “Justice for All” campaign, which is overseen by Soros’ “East West Management Institute.”

The Obama administration turned over key State Department activities to George Soros, especially in Albania. The Deep State continues to be aligned with Soros and uses the State Department in countries such as Albania to push his radical agenda. And, of course, tax dollars for Soros abroad frees up resources for his activities here in the United States.

Kavanaugh hearing confirms the existence of the Deep State

Kavanaugh hearing confirms the
existence of the Deep State  By Bob Livingston
The Kabuki act that was the confirmation process of Brett Kavanaugh revealed something far more important than that underaged children of privilege growing up in the shadows of the District of Criminals were undisciplined and regularly engaged in parent-endorsed, if not parent-encouraged, debauchery. Unfortunately, not one in a million have grasped it, focusing instead on the licentious details Democrat senators directed them toward and whether one story was more credible than the other.

I have told you before that there are two governments in America; the one you see and the one you don't. The one you see is the politicians and the courts. They are actors who give the illusion that you have a constitutional republic based on the rule of law and that you have some input in governmental processes.

The other government is unseen. It has many names and many elements that work against the best interests of the people. It is incestuous. Among its names are shadow government, powers that be and the simple term "they." I call it the Deep State.

It is made up of faceless bureaucrats, crony corporations, the power elite, behind-the-scenes political operatives and lawyers, the banksters, the vast U.S. intelligence apparatus, the military-industrial complex (as revealed by President Eisenhower) and the globalists found in think tanks, the Council on Foreign Relations and Trilateral Commission.

The cover was pulled off a few of them these last days and weeks. They've been circling around the Christine Blasey Ford narrative like flies around a carcass. And, she, in fact, may even be one of them.

Despite hours of investigation by the Senate Judiciary Committee and the FBI, none of Ford's accusations could be corroborated. The witnesses named by Ford – and by the second Kavanaugh accuser, Deborah Ramirez – denied knowledge of the activities the two women described, according to released or leak portions of the FBI investigation.

One of Ford's witnesses is Leland Keyser, the sole female "witness" Ford named. Ford described Keyser as her best friend in their high school days at Holton-Arms preparatory school. Keyser is a former professional golfer who is now in poor health. Her health was the excuse Ford used to explain away Keyser's refusal to corroborate Ford's claims.

Keyser's friends told The Daily Mail that Keyser was "blindsided" by Ford's pulling her into the case. Ford friend Keyser was married to Bob Beckel for 10 years until they divorced in 2002.

Beckel worked for the State Department under Jimmy Carter, managed Walter Mondale's president campaign, managed other Democrat politico campaigns and worked as a lobbyist for many years. He now works as a political pundit on Fox News.

Ford's friend Monica McClean is one of the "beach friends" with whom she discussed the possibility of coming forward with her accusations against Kavanaugh. She's also the woman Ford coached on how to take a polygraph, according to a former Ford boyfriend.

McClean worked at the FBI for 24 years, retiring in 2016. She was a FBI field rep in the office of former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara. Prior to becoming U.S. Attorney, Bharara was chief counsel to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (Communist-NY), and played an important role on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Keyser told investigators this week that McClean had been pressuring her tochange her story and admit that she knew about Kavanaugh's attempt to assault Ford 35 years ago. Her former partner in New York is Jim Margolin. Margolin is still with the FBI and is part of the Robert Mueller investigation into former Donald Trump fixer Michael Cohen.

Ford's lawyer, Debra Katz, is a longtime leftist political operative and fundraiser for SHillary Clinton. She is also vice chair of the George Soros-funded Project on Government Oversight. Soros money has gone to protestors interrupting the Kavanaugh nomination, and those women who cowed Senator Jeff Flake (Coward-Arizona) in an elevator last week were Soros operatives.

Ford's brother, Ralph Blasey III, was formerly a lawyer with the leftist law firm Baker, Hostetler, which created Fusion GPS, the Democrat opposition research organization that employs or employed the wife of FBI agent Bruce Ohr and which created the phony Trump-Russia dossier. Blasey left Baker, Hostetler in 2004. The building in which the offices of Baker, Hostetler reside include CIA front companies Red Coats, Inc., Admiral Security Services and Datawatch. The building is owned by Ford's father, Ralph Blasey II.

But Kavanaugh himself is a Deep State swamp creature. As told by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, the international business editor of The Daily Telegraph and long-time reporter on American government, while Kavanaugh worked for Ken Starr on the Bill Clinton Whitewater investigation, Kavanaugh actively worked to discredit a witness in the Vince Foster death case. The witness, Patrick Knowlton, was the first person at the scene of Foster's death at Fort Marcy Park.

Knowlton later sued FBI agents he claimed were working for Kavanaugh, alleging witness tampering and conspiracy to violate his civil rights. Kavanaugh later wrote the Starr Report on Foster's death, covering up the fact that Foster was murdered and his body was dumped in the park.

Kavanaugh, while working as legal counsel in the White House of George Bush the lesser, also helped push the PATRIOT Act, which destroyed due process and 4th and 5th Amendments.

Kavanaugh's lawyer for his Senate Judiciary process is Beth Wilkinson, a longtime Democrat lawyer who represented several top aides to Hillary Clinton during the FBI investigation into Clinton's homebrew server. She is married to David Gregory of CNN. Wilkinson was also on the prosecution team that convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.

That implicates her in the coverup of this false flag operation, protecting the FBI and then-U.S. Attorney Eric Holder, who provided the explosives for McVeigh and his partner, Terry Nichols.

That there exists a nebulous group or groups actively working against the wishes of the American people is a difficult concept for a people as conditioned as Americans are to grasp. But anyone telling you there is no Deep State is either blind and ignorant or is lying to you. 

The illness deep within the bones of the republic

By John Kass

The illness deep within the bones of the republic

John Kass

It is tempting to watch the political spectacle of Democrats destroying Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh as if it were only some shameful partisan circus.

Something brutally Roman with a howling mob, blood on the sand; or something medieval, like trial by ordeal, with a mace and an axe and the might of brutes as the elements of God’s will.

Or, better yet, a drama as Spanish as the Inquisition itself.

Because what we’re seeing in the Kavanaugh circus isn’t American, where until very recently — like a few months ago — the accused was given the presumption of innocence.

All that has changed. Now the accused is forced to prove his innocence before accusers who must be believed, accusers who aren’t expected to bring witnesses, accusers who must not under any circumstance be subject to rigorous cross-examination, before judges who have already made up their minds.

What we’re witnessing is the symptom of an illness now deep within the very bones of our republic.

It threatens Republicans now, and Democrats tomorrow. It will threaten even those who don’t give two figs for politics and see all such talk as lies told by knaves to fools.

What we are seeing are founding American principles being swept — among them the presumption of innocence and the rights of the accused — to feed the appetites of power politics

That’s what Kavanaugh is dealing with, having to testify and defend himself against uncorroborated allegations of sexual predation 36 years ago, when he was in high school and in his freshman year of college.

The short-term politics of all this is quite clear, a movement led by cynics and assisted by their handmaidens in the Democratic Media Complex.

It is designed to convince suburban women voters that Republicans are hateful creatures, help Democrats pick up congressional seats in the November midterm elections and do away with President Donald Trump.

But look deeper and you’ll see something else.

The sweeping away of traditions that have been carefully nurtured from the founding of this nation, to protect individual liberty and shield us from the passions of the mob.

Without these principles, we are no longer a republic.

To prove the point, Hawaii Democratic Sen. Mazie Hirono insisted the other day that Kavanaugh’s accusers not only “need to be heard, they need to be believed.”

But asked by CNN’s Jake Tapper if Kavanaugh should have the same presumption of innocence as other Americans, here is what Sen. Hirono, a lawyer, said: “I put his denial in the context of everything that I know about him in terms of how he approaches his cases.”

In other words, Kavanaugh’s legal decisions on unrelated matters make him guilty of sexual predation, and therefore, he is disqualified.

That is the reasoning of magistrates in the trials of Salem, that is the logic of Torquemada’s Spain, not the principles of the United States of America.

Sen. Hirono says she supports women. But I wonder about American women who are the mothers of boys, women who are the wives of husbands, women who have brothers. Doesn’t what’s happening to Kavanaugh concern them?

A few days ago, there was that story in The New Yorker, that while a freshman at Yale, Kavanaugh exposed himself at a party to a female student, Deborah Ramirez, who couldn’t remember seeing him do it.

The story offered no corroborating eyewitnesses, only hearsay. And still it was published, providing cover for political operatives to peel Kavanaugh’s skin.

Even the New York Times, the great gray liberal battleship in America’s cultural/political wars, wouldn’t touch it. The newspaper explained:

“The New York Times had interviewed several dozen people over the past week to corroborate Ms. Ramirez’s story, and could find no one with firsthand knowledge. Ms. Ramirez herself contacted former Yale classmates asking if they recalled the episode and told some of them that she could not be certain Mr. Kavanaugh was the one who exposed himself.”

No firsthand knowledge? And even the alleged victim was unsure it was Kavanaugh? Then why run it?

But it was published in The New Yorker. And it was defended by the same journalistic class that wonders, publicly, why Americans hold journalism in such low esteem.

This is what happens when tradition and principle is swept away and are subjugated to politics.

As if to mitigate its sin for avoiding the Yale story, The New York Times offers an account of Kavanaugh’s high school yearbook, and the lusty commentary from high school boys who drink beer.

Those of us who were once high school boys may dimly recall that lust was on our minds, oh, every 30 seconds or so, in those rare moments when physics or baseball didn’t intrude upon the urgent requirements of biology.

Now, I don’t know what happened 36 years ago between Kavanaugh and his accuser, Christine Blasey Ford. And I don’t know what happened at Yale in that drunken dorm room party. I refuse to condemn the women making the accusations.

Witnesses might help us understand, but as I write this, they don’t exist.

And as Sen. Hirono and her Democratic colleagues insist, witnesses are irrelevant.

And this is damning.

Somewhere in America, there must be Democrats who read John F. Kennedy’s “Profiles in Courage” when they were children, Democrats who must be sickened by what is happening and would speak out.

But they must be afraid, lest they, too, are denounced and devoured.

Theirs is a silence breaking the bones of America.

We reap what we sow.

Listen to “The Chicago Way” podcast with John Kass and Jeff Carlin — at www.wgnradio.com/category/wgn-plus/thechicagoway.

The Reckless Coverage of Kavanaugh Allegations Is Why Americans Don’t Trust the Media

The last few weeks of coverage of the accusations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh have been a perfect example of why the American people don’t trust the media.

The sheer breadth of wild and reckless reporting on the situation has been extraordinary, even by the media’s increasingly low standards.

There have been a staggering number of backtracks and incidences of simply false reporting.

NBC published a social media post by one of Ford’’s classmates, Christina King Miranda, saying: “This incident did happen. Many of us heard a buzz about it indirectly with few specific details. However Christine’s vivid recollection should be more than enough for us to truly, deeply know that the accusation is true.”

NBC’s post went viral, but very quickly thereafter, the classmate deleted her post and admitted to not knowing what took place between Kavanaugh and the accuser.

“In my [Facebook] post, I was empowered and I was sure it probably did [happen],” Miranda said, according to NPR. “I had no idea that I would now have to go to the specifics and defend it before 50 cable channels and have my face spread all over MSNBC news and Twitter.”

NBC later had to revise the story.

The New York Times made its own mess. On Monday, the Times reported that Mark Judge, the second man named in Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations against Kavanaugh, had confirmed to the Senate Judiciary Committee that he did recall the episode. But the potentially damning statement was completely incorrect.

Judge has repeatedly claimed, via his lawyer, that he has no recollection of such actions ever taking place.

“Brett Kavanaugh and I were friends in high school but I do not recall the party described in Dr. Ford’s letter. More to the point, I never saw Brett act in the manner Dr. Ford describes,” Judge said in a statement.

The New York Times was forced to backtrack: “An earlier version of this article misstated what Mark Judge told the Senate Judiciary Committee. He said that he does not remember the episode, not that he does.”

Adding to injury, three different outlets framed a joke that Kavanaugh made three years ago as being a subtle admittance to Ford’s allegations.

Speaking to a public forum at Columbus Law School, he said, “what happens at Georgetown Prep, stays at Georgetown Prep.” When watched in its entirety, it is abundantly clear that Kavanagh is completely joking. It was the dean of the school that reminded him of the phrase.

But that didn’t matter. MSNBC, CNN, and Politico presented the clip as somehow evidence that Kavanaugh is guilty or hiding something egregious. That’s three networks who chose to ignore a critical statement made by Kavanaugh to a laughing crowd—that the dean “reminded him to say that.” It was a blatant joke.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., then referenced the clip in a tweet that currently has nearly 50,000 “likes” on Twitter.

“I can’t imagine any parent accepting this view. Is this really what America wants in its next Supreme Court Justice?”

Elizabeth Warren

✔@SenWarren

Brett Kavanaugh talking about his high school in 2015: “What happens at Georgetown Prep, stays at Georgetown Prep.”

I can't imagine any parent accepting this view. Is this really what America wants in its next Supreme Court Justice?

3:23 PM - Sep 18, 2018

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These are just a few examples of the bad reporting in the last week.

Also see: here, here, and here.

Conversely, prominent members of the media lashed out at those who wanted to find the truth about the claims of the accuser, despite the fact that her claims are incredibly vague.

Chris Cillizza

✔@CillizzaCNN

Walking a VERY dangerous line here.....

Robert Costa

✔@costareports

NEWS: Top Senate Republican raises sharp questions about the account of Judge Kavanaugh's accuser.

“The problem is, Dr. Ford can’t remember when it was, where it was, or how it came to be,” Sen. John Cornyn (Texas) says. “There are some gaps there that need to be filled.”

10:21 AM - Sep 18, 2018

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It’s all been a ridiculous fiasco, but this should be a lesson to those who worry that President Donald Trump’s rhetoric about the media is undermining the free press.

It’s the press that’s undermining itself by being so one-sided, so quick to publish damaging stories about conservatives—while holding fire on progressives—and bypassing the due diligence required for accurate and honest reporting that Americans should expect.

The Founding Fathers understood that a free press was vital to preserving liberty and keeping the powerful in check. They also acknowledged that the press itself was a powerful tool and that it could be used to disseminate lies and falsehoods.

The Founders, thankfully, protected press freedom through the First Amendment, as lies by the media would only be made worse by allowing the government to control the flow of information in society.

But the Founders didn’t protect the media because they wanted to empower falsehoods. They did so in order to preserve truth.

Many Americans have judged that modern media have not exactly been truthful with them, and that perception is wrecking the press’ credibility.

Some in the media, such as NBC’s Chuck Todd, have blamed conservatives, Republicans, and Trump for the poor reputation of their industry, claiming that the climate of distrust regarding the press is merely the result of their ferocious critics. “The conservative echo chamber created that environment,” Todd said on “Meet the Press.”

Polls also show that trust in media is catastrophically bad, a trend that predates the Trump administration, but is worse now. They also show that a majority of American people believe that the media intentionally publishes fake news, and a plurality think they create false stories about the Trump administration.

With the way the Kavanaugh allegations have been treated, no wonder huge segments of Americans are angry and frustrated.

The legacy media’s failure to acknowledge that the fault is not in their stars but themselves means that trust in the fourth estate will continue to erode, and they will get blistered with criticism that sticks.

In America, we have a free press, but the American people have free minds to judge truth and distortion.

The media’s role in the Kavanaugh controversy further erodes any chance the press has to regain the people’s trust. If anything, it should make us grateful for an alternative media that continues to call them out.

This story has been corrected to reflect that the NBC report was on a classmate of Ford’s.